Bill Staubi

Lift Me Up

Bill Staubi

The thing I love about being surrounded by artwork is the constant interaction. It's not decoration for me, it's an active thing in my life. I've always felt that if you wanted to live in a creative environment, then you have to do something to make it happen. Either you make the art or you make the creative objects, or you support them through purchasing in my case.

BUILDING
COMMUNITY.

Bill Staubi
2SLGBTQIA+ Leadership Award

My name is Bill Staubi. I'm an art collector, former CSC (Correctional Service Canada) employee, and gay about town.

There but for the grace of God go most of us. We're one bad friend away from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. We're two beer away from doing something that goes tragically wrong. We're one pitched fit away from being more aggressive than we meant to be. Not everybody who is in jail is a bad person. They've done a bad thing, but they are not necessarily a bad person. And you see how sometimes the experience of being arrested and incarcerated and processed through a system can grind a person and can skew them.

One of the things that always frustrated me all through my career is the great paradox. Canadian society - we use expressions like “pay your debt to society,” but that debt is never ever paid off. You're constantly paying interest on that debt. We want them to live in a crime-free neighborhood, but not ours. We want them to meet a nice person, form a pro-social lifestyle, but not with our children.

We want a full-time job that pays well enough they don't have to consider crime, but not where I work. And how we expect this magic to take place if we are not prepared to make that commitment and that contribution to that process.

Those experiences teach you a lot about society at large and how things are working, and also you learn how to get things done, because you're working in an unconventional environment.

It was part of my responsibility as not only just as a queer person at work, but also because I was in the executive ranks.

My job was to create a workplace that was free of harassment or that was more respectful of people and that was a place that people wanted to work because there could be good things to be had by working there.

It comes back to what I feel about the creative community. If you want the world to be a certain way, you can wait for other people to make it that way, and if you're lucky, they will. But human history hasn't really shown that that's a good strategy. You want the world to be a certain way, you have to do something to help make it a certain way. You won't change the entire world, but you can change your immediate environment. I had to come out quite visibly, and so did. Started to talk about being gay, about being queer. Very openly, trying to find my place in that part of the organization. At that time there weren't a lot of “out” people. I found people were either extremely patient, “he'll get over this eventually, quiet down,” or supportive. I don't doubt that there were some people that disapproved. I don't doubt that there were some people that were offended. I don't doubt that it challenged some people's spiritual beliefs, those kinds of things.

The world is made up of all kinds of different people and CSC is no different than the rest of the world.

Because I didn't have a mentor of my own, an older, more experienced gay man in the organization  to say "okay, here's how you navigate this business." That made me very receptive to being that for other people.

I always feel that if you help people work through their difficulties, you can help them be a better person at what they're doing.

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Bill Staubi 2SLGBTQIA+ Leadership Award:

Correctional Service of Canada is establishing an award in honour of Bill Staubi to recognize a CSC employee who has made a lasting and substantial impact by actively supporting the 2SLGBTQIA+ community within CSC.

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I wouldn't want for it to create the illusion that it was me that made this change. I was part of things that other people wanted.

Other people were doing their thing in their own ways to make these kinds of changes.

But it is extremely humbling and gratifying to think that people remember that some of the things that I did made a positive difference. When people were initially asking me about the award, it was important for me that there be a component at some point in time that recognizes that offenders live in that world. They're not passing through it, they live there. That's their community.

And they do a tremendous amount of work, quietly and often unsung, to try and make it a safe environment for 2SLGBTQIA+ people, both staff and inmates.

The hard part for me at this stage in my life is I truly was unaware of the level of impact.

It’s just for me was - that's the way I walk through the world, that's the way I want the world to walk with me.

To be reminded now that no, it was for some people extraordinary or it was unexpected and appreciated has just been so incredibly rewarding and humbling.