Three Black Ontario leaders reflect on their histories of public service – and the strength to be found in diversity.

Public service roles carry authority, visibility, and power. First responders, physicians, and city staff are often the first people we meet in moments of crisis, when stakes are high and trust matters most.

For many Black communities in Ontario, trust in public institutions is affected not only by policy or credentials, but by who shows up, how they listen, and whether they understand the realities and nuances of people’s lives. Representation, in this sense, directly affects whether people willingly engage, disclose information, and even accept help.

Across emergency response, healthcare, and municipal policy, three Black public service leaders — Charles McGregor, Brandon Hay, and Dr. Mireille Norris — reflect on how diversity strengthens public institutions by building trust and credibility among the public.

From his high school football team to the Canadian Armed Forces Reserve, Charles McGregor describes himself as “a person who was always in uniform.” After five years in the Armed Forces, Charles was ready for his next career step when a former army colleague reached out with a suggestion — that he consider the fire service. McGregor felt an immediate sense of alignment. Soon after orientation it was clear that firefighting felt like “a calling–not just a job.”

Still, in a largely homogenous fire department, McGregor stood out. During an information session, a fellow fire department hopeful told him, “You’ll get in ... no problem” alluding to his skin colour. McGregor balked at the implication. It was important for him to succeed on his own merit, because credibility matters in a profession built on public trust. Being perceived as a token would risk undermining not only his own legitimacy, but the trust communities place in the service itself.

For celebrated geriatrician and internal medicine specialist Dr. Mireille Norris, entry into medicine required extraordinary persistence. Looking back, she identifies both systemic barriers and pivotal moments that opened doors to her. While working as a physical therapist, she applied to medical school three times over six years, before being accepted to Université de Montréal in 1988 through the “pathway of workers, not students, where grades were not the sole consideration.”

She excelled academically, yet despite being at the top of her class, she was placed 26th on the waiting list for an internal medicine subspecialty. “To me, that was a signal that I was being discriminated against,” she says. While Canada’s medical training system is formally merit-based, racialized candidates have long described facing additional barriers that are less visible but deeply consequential – subjective evaluation processes, uneven access to mentorship and advocacy, and financial and caregiving pressures that make relocation for training more difficult.

When applying for residency in geriatric medicine in Toronto, a moment of advocacy made the difference. Pregnant with her second child, Norris needed to start residency late. While other institutions refused, geriatrician Dr. Barry Goldlist at the University of Toronto argued that denying her would be discriminatory. “So as geriatrics opened the door to me,” Norris says, “I took the leap to move to Toronto.”

For Brandon Hay, a Community Development Officer (CDO) at the City of Toronto and founder of the Black Daddies Club, the path into public service was equally winding. While pursuing degree in Music Business at the Trebas Institute in Toronto, his girlfriend announced that she was unexpectedly pregnant. Complicating matters, he had received a scholarship to attend a music institute in London, UK – an exciting opportunity. Brandon knew he was at a crossroads – raised by his mother in Jamaica before they moved to Ontario, he had grown up without much involvement from his dad. Reflecting on that experience, he committed to redefining fatherhood for his son. Brandon stayed in Toronto, turning down the scholarship, but showing up for his young family.

A few years later, Brandon received a terrible phonecall. An eleven year old boy had been hired to murder Brandon’s father – and two weeks later, had been murdered himself. Back in the police station in Jamaica, facing a nonplussed officer who’d grown accustomed to violence like this, Brandon described being “hit with the realization that there was a normalization of crisis across Black communities globally.”

Led by the conviction to change this reality in his own community, Brandon created the Black Daddies Club, a venue for Black dads like himself to talk openly about isolation, mental health, and the challenges of fatherhood. What began with a need for processing grief and anger grew into community-based mental health education delivered in spaces like barbershops — where many Black men already feel a sense of belonging.

As he continued working in social services, Brandon felt that “without the letters behind my name, I wasn’t taken seriously.” He returned to academic studies through a York University Masters of Environmental Studies that recognized community engagement as a substitute for a bachelors degree, affirming that knowledge is not produced only in classrooms but through navigating the persistent, everyday challenges of community life.

In a city as multi-cultural as Toronto, diversity through the ranks is not a “nice-to-have.” It is foundational to effective public service. In firefighting, “your interactions with the public are everything,” McGregor says. “And your ability to meet a situation depends on the abilities [of firefighters] on that truck.” Linguistic and cultural diversity can mean the difference between confusion and clarity – even life and death. He recalls a medical call where a firefighter who spoke Mandarin was able to gather a victim’s detailed health history that could otherwise have been missed — information that was crucial once paramedics arrived.

For Dr. Norris, diversity is equally critical in geriatric and dementia care. “People who are racialized have often been victimized by virtue of their skin,” she explains. “If you add age and dementia, they are often even more mistrusting of institutions and systems.” In many African diaspora cultures, Norris explains, “we are beholden to the elder. The term dementia [can be] seen as reductive and diminishing of the value of the person,” prompting distrust from family members who may be reluctant to invite strangers into their homes, fearing judgment, misinterpretation, or accusations of abuse. The result is heightened caregiver stress, often carried silently.

Culturally informed care and the presence of staff at all levels of an organization who can relate to the nuances of patient experiences can help. Whether that means meeting patients in community spaces or offering culturally meaningful practices — such as smudging ceremonies for Indigenous patients — representation allows providers to deliver care that is compassionate, effective, and that ultimately can lead to stronger health outcomes.

The same is true in mental health care, where Brandon Hay is working to prevent crisis before it escalates. Black youth, for example, tend to disproportionately enter mental health care through emergency service, suggesting that earlier intervention is needed, according to Pathways to Care. Representation among therapists plays a significant role, too – “in Canada, 60% of Black folks [report that they don’t engage] in therapy [but they] would if the counselors look like them,” he explains, citing research by the Mental Health Commission.

Seeing an opportunity to intervene in the mental healthcare system, Hay is training as a therapist himself, while leading the Community Healing Project — a City of Toronto program supporting young people impacted by community violence. The initiative combines mental health education with paid peer leadership, allowing participants to bring knowledge back into their own communities and promoting youth participation at a time when mental health concerns are at a worrying increase among Ontario youth, per CAMH. He hopes that this work will help “get more Black and racialized folks into the mental health sector and to create a [mental health] infrastructure that includes [Black people] as core part of the conversation.”

Alongside formal training, Hay’s systemic thinking is shaped by community-based practices he has learned from — including ballroom culture, an established form of care and kinship within Black LGBTQ communities built around dance, embodied joy, and belonging. He also draws on outdoor, land-based approaches to healing and community-based education from being a part of Gatherings – Ecoversities, a global network of scholars, community workers, and others exploring alternatives in higher education.

Once established in Toronto and finding her footing in geriatrics, Dr. Norris sought greater systemic knowledge through a master’s degree in hospital administration, gaining expertise in health law, economics, and program evaluation. This expertise led her to be recruited by Sunnybrook Hospital in 2005, where she led one of Canada’s first hospital training programs designed to strengthen stroke care by training diverse teams of family doctors and internationally trained physicians in critical care and the Canadian health system. The program improved stroke outcomes nationally — and ultimately helped build a system strong enough to no longer rely on it.

Dr. Norris, McGregor, and Hay are all fiercely dedicated to ensuring the next generation of public service professionals have the resources to succeed. On the success of the physicians she mentored through her hospital program, Dr. Norris was appointed Faculty Lead for Black and Indigenous Learners in the University of Toronto’s Department of Medicine. Her initiative dramatically shifted applicant demographics — moving from zero Black or Indigenous applicants to steady, growing cohorts within a few years. Alongside this, Dr. Norris helped launch a funded year-long research mentorship program at Sunnybrook, pairing Black and Indigenous medical students with physician mentors. The program — the only one of its kind nationally — has strengthened access to research, improved residency match outcomes, and helped ensure that the next generation of physicians reflects the communities they serve.

McGregor reflects that early in his career, long-term planning and career guidance weren’t common: “people were figuring it out as they went.” His advice to the next generation of first responders is practical and hopeful: wear your uniform with pride, but make sure to keep learning. “After five years or so, think about where you’d like to be in another five years.” Another piece of advice? If there’s a course or certification on offer, “Take it! Leverage in-house training programs and internal learning portals, as well as official government training platforms, many of which are offered at no cost or at a significantly lower cost than those delivered by private organizations. Keep networking, keep talking to those “others” who have gone before you and follow that roadmap.”

Through the Community Healing Project, Hay has seen what happens when emerging mental health workers are given space to grow. “It helps them think, ‘OK, maybe I want to go back to school… maybe I’m actually good at this,’” he says. At the same time, the program supports racialized graduate students who may be among the only Black or racialized people in their classes and feel pressure to hold back. In community-based cohorts, Hay notes, they are able to connect their lived experience to what they’ve learned in the classroom.

His commitment also shapes how Hay parents his own sons as a heterosexual Black man and ally. Grounded in his community work and time spent in Black LGBTQ spaces, he is intentional about making room for vulnerability alongside strength. “We want our boys and men to be assertive and strong,” he says. “But how do we make space for them to be soft and vulnerable, too?” What matters most to Hay is that his sons know they are loved.

When people see themselves reflected in those who respond to emergencies, deliver care, and shape institutions, trust deepens and public systems become more credible, effective, and humane. In turn, those systems create space for the next generation to thrive – wherever their passions and talents lead.