Twelve years ago, John Currie helped start something that didn’t have a national office, a track record, or much of a budget. He had an idea: put Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth side by side, on Indigenous territory, guided by Elders and Knowledge Keepers, and let relationship do what policy alone can’t. That idea became the Youth-to-Youth (Y2Y) Experience, and it became the reason HIP exists.

John has led HIP from that first pilot to a nationally recognized program, largely as a volunteer, because he believed the work mattered more than the paycheque. He still believes that. It’s just that the work has grown enough now to need him full-time.

He didn’t arrive at reconciliation work from a straight line, and he doesn’t pretend otherwise. Before HIP, John built a career in executive leadership and non-profit governance – as Interim Executive Director at AGE Inc., as Chief Information Officer for the Ontario Safety Association of Community and Healthcare, and as a founding member of the Toronto Chapter of the Society for Information Management. He’s sat on enough boards to know that good governance isn’t glamorous, but it’s what lets good ideas survive contact with reality.

That instinct shows up in how he’s helped build HIP: a board that’s deliberately balanced – half Indigenous, half non-Indigenous, gender-balanced and geographically dispersed – because inclusive decision-making isn’t a value you state, it’s a structure you build.

John is the Past President of the Rotary Club of Pickering and served on the City of Pickering’s Cultural Advisory Committee, which is really just two more rooms where he has done the same thing he does everywhere: shows up, listens, and looks for where people’s interests actually overlap. That approach has been recognized – the Pickering Rotary Club’s Service Above Self award, the 2021 City of Pickering Individual Volunteer Civic Award, the Rotary District 7070 Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Award, and a Rotary Paul Harris Fellow. He’d tell you the awards are nice, but the 250-plus Y2Y alumni out there living differently because of what they experienced – that’s the actual scoreboard.

John’s view on this work is simple, and he says it the same way every time:

“Each of us has the power to ignite change and make a lasting difference in the lives of others.”

He calls it One Fire, One People, One Future – not as a slogan, but as a description of what he’s watched happen, over and over, when you get people on the land together and let the fire do some of the talking.

There’s a lot of work still ahead – new partnerships, new territories, a next generation of Y2Y alumni carrying this forward in ways John hasn’t even imagined yet. He’s looking forward to it. That’s usually how you can tell it’s worth doing.