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The Outlier

“Going to school in a border city, working there for a few years, I got acquainted with a variety of lifestyles and cultures, which always intrigued me.”

In conversation with Marg Stanowski, the former Executive Director of Operation Springboard for thirty years, until her retirement in 2022, it quickly becomes apparent that the status quo never appealed to her. A courageous leader who embraced innovation and change throughout her storied career, the outlier pursued paths less travelled, or, in many instances, seldom travelled at all. Being in the vanguard, however, had its challenges. Still, she persevered, and Operation Springboard grew to become the standout organization it is today.

Marg grew up in south Etobicoke, west of the Humber River, in a red brick, six-bedroom, two-storey Georgian-style farmhouse, along with six siblings, including an identical twin sister. Both parents were high school teachers. Her mother took a sabbatical from teaching to work at home, raising the family.

Completing high school, her parents would have preferred she attend St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto, their alma mater. They were just as encouraging, however, when she was accepted into the University of Windsor, where she would earn a specialized degree in social work.

In addition to her parents’ encouragement, Marg possessed both leadership skills and an abundance of confidence, a recurring familial trait. Marg descends from a long line of leaders. Her father was a naval officer during World War II. Before that, his father was the superintendent of the Ontario Hospital Farm in Brockville. Family trees on both her mother’s and father’s sides include a significant number of educators and faith leaders.

Among the few post-secondary institutions in Canada at the time offering a specialized social work program, the University of Windsor was, in her opinion, the best academic choice for her, with a few unintended benefits. In addition to meeting her future husband in Windsor, “Going to school in a border city, working there for a few years, I got acquainted with a variety of lifestyles and cultures, which always intrigued me.”

“The training was adequate, at best. Back then, it was different. You were just thrown in, and you figured it out.”

Marg was an outlier from the start. After earning her degree in 1974, she was hired immediately, securing work as a federal parole officer with the National Parole Board of Canada. Recruiters were on campus offering job opportunities. Still in her early twenties, her parents weren’t concerned about the career path she had chosen because “They knew I was capable.”

Traditionally, a graduate would initially work as a guard in a federal penitentiary, then find employment in the community as a parole officer. Not so for Marg. The recruiters were blunt, informing her, “The guys would look at your legs too much.”

Asked if she was intimidated, Marg doesn’t pause even for a moment, “There were a lot of barriers, but you know, I wasn’t.”

With an honours degree in hand, before commencing work in her profession, her employer required that she complete rudimentary job preparation at the Correctional Staff College. Federal prison guards, classification and parole officers received training at this facility in Kingston, Ontario. At the time, she was one of only about half a dozen females in the role nationwide. “The training was adequate, at best. Back then, it was different. You were just thrown in, and you figured it out.”

And that’s precisely what she did.

“You treat somebody as a person, and the rest of it seemed easy after that.”

Settling in Windsor, the 23-year-old, residing in a residence in the shadow of the Ambassador Bridge, was assigned a caseload of forty-four parolees, “Mostly males in their forties, unemployed who had worked for Ford Motor and then lost everything due to their incarceration. Their crimes largely involved violence, use of guns in offences, robbery and fraud.”

Many resided in St. Leonard’s House, the first halfway house in Canada, established by the Anglican Church in 1962 in a series of old Victorian homes located half a mile from the banks of the Detroit River. Father Neil Libby was a key inspiration behind the establishment of the halfway house movement.

The experience had a profound effect on Marg in her career decisions as she remembers, “It was mainly the Windsor experience that influenced me.”

From the beginning, she was driven by a desire to discover “How do you recognize the indicators of what might lead a person to crime,” and challenged herself to learn “what interventions would make a positive change in a person’s life.”

Only days into the job, an encounter with a parolee confirmed she’d chosen the right path. Mandatory supervision was introduced in 1970. Offenders could now be released upon completing two-thirds of their sentence, serving the remainder under community supervision.

As it were, a middle-aged malefactor recently released from Millhaven arrived at her office, and, addressing Marg in a demeaning tone, demanded he be returned to the penitentiary to serve out the remainder of his time there. Leaving him to stew in the waiting room, she informed him that arrangements would be made with the authorities to take him back into custody.

Sensing the parolee’s vitriol was simply bluster, she left him to cool his heels for a few minutes, then directed him to a seat inside her office. She offered him a glass of water and casually struck up a conversation. In minutes, she had brought him around to where he changed his mind about returning to a prison cell. Observing his change in attitude confirmed her belief, “You treat somebody as a person, and the rest of it seemed easy after that.” From the encounter, she concluded, “I had an ability to affect people. To reach them on a one-to-one basis. Not all of them, obviously, but I connected with them as people and not as a parolee.”

“Upon entering the large conference room, attended by their peers, all 120 attendees had prearranged to dress in black attire. As the pair from Springboard entered, attendees turned their backs in unison.”

Never a pushover, she quickly gained a reputation for being principled and standing her ground on points of fairness. Back then, issues were handled differently than they are today. Rules were laxer, and often left her thinking, “What the heck is going on?”

One instance highlighting this laissez-faire attitude, as well as her intrepidness, concerned an interaction with an unemployed parolee who, against established rules, was permitted to reside with his family across the river on the US side of the border in downtown Detroit.

For their initial meeting, he provided instructions on where to meet in a park in a less desirable part of the Motor City. Marg had visited the blighted American metropolis numerous times and soldiered on. Arriving at the designated meeting place, she felt unsafe, recalling, “It was downtown Detroit in 1974. How I ever walked out of there is another matter.”

Initially unable to locate the parolee, she realized after the fact that he’d been watching her the entire time, getting a kick out of attempting to make her feel ill at ease.

He didn’t know who he was dealing with.

She took control of the situation and directed him to a burger joint where they could talk. At the conclusion, he offered to pay for her purchase, but she refused, knowing it was a manipulative ploy.

Outside on the sidewalk, she inquired where he got the money to pay for his purchase, and he smirked, “I didn’t pay.”

“When you gain more experience and exposure to this kind of work, you think, I can handle anything.”

In 1976, Marg married Walter “Skip” Stanowski, son of four-time Stanley Cup-winning Toronto Maple Leaf defenceman Wally Stanowski. By 1980, the couple had relocated to their native Toronto, settling into a tree-lined street near Marg’s childhood home.

Marg continued working for the National Parole Board, merged with the Penitentiary System, and became known as Correctional Services Canada as a Case Management Officer. By 1983, progress toward gender equity at Correctional Services of Canada had been slow. A report in the sector newsletter, Let’s Talk (Vol 8/No. 10) from that year stated that the federal department now boasted 21% of its staff was female, half of whom worked in an administrative capacity.

Montgomery House was established on the second floor of Postal Station K in 1970, inconspicuously operating as a correctional centre without incident in the community for much of that time. Media reports confirm that in 1973, its most renowned “resident” was Toronto Maple Leafs owner Harold Ballard, convicted of theft and fraud and sentenced to three years in Kingston Penitentiary.

In 1986, Marg was appointed superintendent of this correctional centre, located north of Eglinton Avenue on Yonge Street.

At this time, the federal government struck an agreement with the John Howard Society of Toronto, led by David Arbuckle, to operate the Accelerated Community Integration Program at the facility. Arbuckle’s decision placed him in opposition to his provincial association in a clash that led to him severing ties with the society and relocating services under the auspices of Operation Springboard.

Marg explains that the transfer of services to a not-for-profit “totally enraged the federal system.” Unions cried foul, concerned about job loss and claiming the new arrangement put the community at risk.

In the process, Marg changed teams, became a Program Manager overseeing Montgomery House and two other federal homes, but now as a Springboard employee. After years on the federal payroll, the transition wasn’t easy, so why make the change?

She says today, “I really thought about it. I had a good future with Corrections Canada, but the position appealed to me. It really made sense.”

She admired Arbuckle’s approach of mobilizing support around the person, or as she puts it, “Dealing with the person as a whole and getting them the right resources.” Systemic change appealed to her, and the outlier in her wanted to get ahead of the curve. “David Arbuckle was a man of very few words, but whatever his words were, they were very insightful.”

Subsequently, both were ostracized by many in the sector.

The clash unfolded in public at a conference held at a downtown Toronto hotel attended by Marg and David. Upon entering the large conference room, attended by their peers, all 120 attendees had prearranged to dress in black attire. As the pair from Springboard entered, attendees turned their backs in unison. “I’d never seen anything like that in my life.”

She felt the sting of the action, but it didn’t dissuade her.

Fifteen months after commencing work at Springboard, the unimaginable happened when a Montgomery House resident on forty-eight-hour leave from Warkworth Penitentiary, brutally slayed a member of the public. A media firestorm ensued. In the following months, Marg would be the public face of the coroner’s inquest.

“It took a lot out of me,” she sighs.

Marg took a temporary break from the corrections sector and found employment elsewhere. In November 1988, Operation Springboard didn’t renew its contract to oversee the operation of Montgomery House, and the administration returned to Correctional Services of Canada.

“My interest was to ensure the community was entirely involved in the design and delivery of programs.”

It wasn’t the end for Marg, though. She eventually returned to Springboard first as a board member and, upon David Arbuckle’s retirement in 1992, applied for the Executive Director position. When word of her intention reached David, he asked her, “Are you sure you want this?” to which she replied, “Yeah. It’s in my blood.”

She wasn’t guaranteed the position. Almost thirty other applicants were vying for the ED title, but her qualifications earned her the job.

Taking the helm, she envisioned the job as “an opportunity to innovate. My interest was to ensure the community was entirely involved in the design and delivery of programs.” She pursued affiliations with non-traditional partners who could bring their expertise to the table. “I really put a focus on how we can work with victims who’d had a lot of serious loss,” including Priscilla de Villiers’ CAVEAT and Dawna Speers’ Speers Society. Additional areas of focus included support for youth justice, supportive housing, employment training, life skills education and supporting people with developmental disabilities.

“Operation Springboard’s capacity is its ability to adapt and evolve through the changing needs of the people it supported, and I was glad to have played a part in that.”

After many years in a leadership role, she began to give serious thought to retirement. However, when COVID-19 struck, she stayed on a little longer, knowing the time was fast approaching when she would hand over the mantle to a successor. “When people said, ‘you’ve been [at Springboard] for thirty years,’ I was like, what?”

One day in 2022, she decided, “It was time. I was ready to leave.”

Today, in retirement, she is proud of the accomplishments she made during her tenure as the organization’s leader. “Operation Springboard’s capacity is its ability to adapt and evolve through the changing needs of the people it supported, and I was glad to have played a part in that.”

The outlier proved to be a trailblazer. According to recent statistics from Correctional Services of Canada, 52% of the agency’s staff is female. There are 2,378 women correctional officers. Anne Kelly has been the Commissioner of Correctional Services of Canada since 2018.

The recently established Marg Stanowski Fund for Emerging Leaders ensures Springboard will continue to deliver essential programs and services.

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