Christine is a nationally published health and fitness/lifestyle writer. She writes a weekly column in the Sherbrooke Record, Quebec’s second-largest English language newspaper. In addition, Christine is the creator, producer, and host of B.C.’s only Running, Fitness and Health show called Run With It airing on Novus (TELUS) and YouTube channel.

She has been interviewed by mainstream media, while my stories have been printed nationally. Christine has written stories for The Seattle Times, The Vancouver Sun, Snowshoe Magazine, Canadian Running Magazine, Huffington Post, Women's National Post, Optimyz Magazie, iRun Magazine and Get Out There Magazine.

Dr. Denise McDermott, M.D. has been in private practice since 2001. She completed her Adult Psychiatry residency at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and her Child Psychiatry fellowship at UCLA. As a medical doctor with board certifications in both Adult and Child Psychiatry, she treats children, adolescents and adults. Her goal is to empower you, your child, and your family to live the best life possible. Her approach is to encourage people to believe in wellness, not illness, and to lead a balanced healthy lifestyle.

“When you are going through a crisis in your life, remind yourself that on the other side of that is stabilization and then a place of thriving,” she tells her patients everyday.

Dr. Denise includes a multi-disciplinary approach to medicine, where she integrates many holistic modalities such as Eastern medicine, healers, nutritionists and many more. She has collegial relationships and collaborates with other physicians, psychologists, marriage and family therapists and educational therapists. She believes in prescribing the least amount of medication possible and creates an integrative wellness plan that resonates for each patient.

She is a sought after medical doctor for second opinions, specific diagnostic assessments, medication management, and psychotherapy.

Website: http://www.drdenisemd.com/

Dorie Ladner was “born a rebel against oppression.” A native of the Hattiesburg, Mississippi community known as Palmer’s Crossing, she spent her childhood fighting back against the oppressive racial norms that governed the lives of Black people there. Her mother taught all of her eight children that they “were as good as anybody.”

Accommodating to white supremacy was not in her makeup. One day when she was twelve, Dorie was reading an issue of Jet Magazine at a convenience store, when the store’s white clerk “slapped [her] on the behind.” “I turned around and started beating him with the bag of doughnuts,” she recalled. When she told her mother of the incident, her mother replied “you should have killed him. Don’t ever let any white man touch you wrong.” So, explained Dorie, when she and her sister Joyce became part of the Movement, they were simply “doing what they prepared us to do.”

The Ladner family was close to Vernon Dahmer and his family. Dahmer was the president of the Forrest County branch of the NAACP and a vocal proponent of voting rights. Dahmer helped the Ladner sisters form an NAACP Youth Council in nearby Hattiesburg. Clyde Kennard, another older activist who attended school at the University of Chicago, agreed to serve as the youth council’s advisor. Pretty soon, Kennard and Dahmer were bringing the Ladner sisters to Jackson for statewide NAACP meetings. “I’m so grateful that I was exposed to people who at the time had vision,” remembered Dorie Ladner.

Both Dahmer and Kennard were killed because of their leadership in civil rights struggle. Both deaths profoundly affected Dorie and her sister.

The Ladners met Medgar Evers on one of their Jackson trips, and he also became an important mentor when they enrolled in Jackson State College. “Every Wednesday, we would go over and talk to him about freedom, which was abstract; all we wanted to know was about our freedom,” Dorie explained. In 1961, with Evers’ guidance, Ladner joined the protests of the “Tougaloo [College] Nine,” a group of students from Tougaloo who were arrested for trying to integrate the public library in downtown Jackson. As a consequence of her activism, Ladner was expelled from Jackson State. She and her sister later matriculated at Tougaloo College, which was known for its liberal stance towards student activism.

Emma Bell, Dorie Ladner, Dona Richards, Sam Shirah, and Doris Derby outside 16th Street Baptist Church funeral, September 1963, Danny Lyon, Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement 96-97, dektol.wordpress.com

When Evers was assassinated in June, 1963, it was especially hard on Dorie and her sister. The anger that had been building up after every murder and lynching, especially those of Clyde Kennard and Emmett Till, reached its boiling point the next day. The day after Evers’ murder, Dorie ran up to two white police officers sitting in front of the Jackson’s Black Masonic Temple (which also served as the NAACP’s headquarters) and shouted at them, “Where were you last night? Why are you here now? Shoot! Shoot! Shoot us in the back like you did Medgar Evers.”

Despite her family’s insistence that she get an education, Dorie dropped out of Tougaloo three separate times to work for SNCC full-time. She once told her sister Joyce, “I can’t stay in school and know my people are suffering.” In the summer of 1962, she started working on SNCC’s voter registration projects in the Delta. Three years later, she became SNCC’s project director in Natchez, Mississippi.

Although Ladner was raised never to let fear prevent her from doing what she knew was right, she understood the constant possibility and danger of white violence. Upon entering Natchez with former SNCC chair Chuck McDew and field secretary George Greene, McDew handed her a gun for protection. Despite never needing to use it, Ladner was certain she would’ve if she needed to. She once said, “I didn’t think about the ramifications of anything like that; it was save yourself, survive.”

Alider Pratts is a veteran of the US Marine Corps, has served North Hudson Regional Fire and Rescue (NJ) since 2004, and has quickly risen through the ranks by scoring at the top of each of his promotional lists. Pratts became a Captain in 2010, where he worked in the department’s busiest companies including Squad 1 and Ladder Tower 3 in West New York, NJ. He became a Battalion Chief in 2017, where he covered all three battalions as the Third Platoon’s rotating BC, before being promoted to Deputy Chief in 2022. He is North Hudson’s Chief of Special Operations Command, as well as the department’s Training Division Chief. DC Pratts serves as a member of the UASI-Metro USAR Command Staff and is the NJDFS Subject Matter Expert in Fire Service Active Shooter Response. As an Active Shooter Response SME, he maintains leadership roles in local, county, and state interdisciplinary committees. DC Pratts is a NJ Certified Level 2 Fire Instructor, teaches at the Monmouth County Fire Academy and Kean University’s Fire Safety Program, and has written articles published in “Fire Engineering Magazine”.