Meet the Council

Certified Peer Support Worker/Harm Reduction Outreach Worker/
Policy Advisor/Person With Lived Experience

My name is Brian Beck Pascoe and I am currently a Peer Support Worker with Centre De Sante Temiskaming, a Harm Reduction Worker and Policy Advisor with the Temiskaming Health Unit, a Person With Lived Experience and Pillar Lead for Community Health and Safety With Temismaking Drug and Alcohol Strategy Committee, a member of the Prison Health Research Council, and a board member with Northeastern Recovery Centre in Kirkland Lake.

After 30 years of substance use, mental health struggles, homelessness, and encounters with the justice system I decided to use my lived experience to advocate and try help others in my community and worldwide. My passion really comes out when I know something needs to be done to help others, whoever they are, and I am presented with limitations, barriers, and stigma.

I am usually drawn to the communities I’ve grown up in, or currently reside, as it’s the personal connections and how the experiences of my peers relate to my past or present experiences that really motivates me to do better and try to precipitate change. When I recognize where I was in someone I am working with, I feel that’s where I make the greatest impact. And I love doing it completely.

George is a Toronto-based HIV activist, peer counselor, musician, and community advocate. After serving 14 years in prison, he transformed his experiences with incarceration and living with HIV into a platform for change. Alongside his work with HIV organizations and racial justice initiatives, George also channels his story through music and studio work, using art as a powerful tool for healing and awareness. His leadership and creativity continue to inspire systemic change and uplift marginalized communities.

Hi everyone, I am a Two-Spirit Transwoman, and I am a senior citizen, with a quarter century of lived experience. My training as a Prisoners’ Legal Advocate led me into fighting for the Human Rights for those behind the wire. In doing so, the ability I created to become effective had concluded with some very positive outcomes and producing safer environments for incarcerated peoples. I also recognize that the needs of individuals are not a cookie cutter process. Aligning with the principles that if you always treat an individual according to who they were, you will never see who they can become. My work has highlighted the harm done with an understanding of what needs to improve with a map for arriving at the finish line.
As I continue, I say
All My Relations

Honey Johnson is a dedicated community advocate with a strong commitment to social justice, equity, and healing. With lived experience and years of community engagement, Honey Johnson has worked extensively alongside unhoused individuals, incarcerated people, and marginalized communities to amplify voices too often left unheard.
Through work with organizations such as the Busby Centre, Elizabeth Fry Society, Uplift Black, 2 Spirited Peoples of the first nation. Honey Johnson has focused on breaking down systemic barriers while fostering inclusion, dignity, and empowerment. Their efforts have included outreach and peer support, health advocacy, and guiding conversations that center the humanity and resilience of those navigating criminalization and displacement.

Passionate about creating change at both grassroots and systemic levels, Honey Johnson continues to build bridges between communities, service providers, and researchers to ensure that policies and practices reflect compassion, cultural safety, and lived realities. Their ongoing work reflects a belief that true justice must be rooted in care, accountability, and community healing.

James Ruston is a remarkable advocate rooted in transformative justice, drawing on more than three decades of lived experience in the carceral system. He has published in Briarpatch and the Journal of Prisoners on Prisons, and shared his story on podcasts, radio, and in the documentary Reclamation. James’ advocacy centers on ending life sentences for youth, improving conditions of confinement, and advancing healthcare access for incarcerated people. He currently serves on Rittenhouse’s Board of Directors and supports the Looking at the Stars Foundation, which brings live classical music into prisons.

Kanor is a graduate of McMaster University and the University of Windsor and has lived experience in both the Canadian Provincial and Federal correctional systems. 

He helped found a company called FedPhoneLine Inc., which is dedicated to helping incarcerated individuals stay connected with their friends and family while reducing the costs of expensive jail phone calls. 

I am Latasha Wilson, a Black and Indigenous women as well as a mother. Who is dedicated advocate for criminal justice and prison health reform, committed to dismantling systemic inequities and amplifying marginalized voices. As a Black and Indigenous woman with both lived experience and professional expertise, I bring a deeply informed perspective to the fight for justice.

I have served on the Homelessness Board, the Prison Health Board, and contributed to the Walls to Bridges Collective, working at the intersection of policy, advocacy, and direct community engagement.
With firsthand knowledge of the legal system and experience within the courts, I tirelessly advocate for BIPOC individuals, challenging structural barriers and promoting equity, accountability, and restorative justice.

Currently, I am pursuing a General BA at Laurier University, deepening my understanding of the systems I work to transform. Also I have lunched my consulting business Transformative Justice For All. I am committed to sustainable change and collaborate with communities, policymakers, and organizations to reimagine justice beyond punitive systems. My vision is a society where fairness, dignity, and opportunity are fundamental rights for all-not privileges.

I am my ancestors wildest dreams!

Marcie McIlveen is a person with many years of lived experience with homelessness, hospitalization, mental health/substance use, and criminal justice involvement. Her commitment to this work and to change centres around her experiences. She finds it both honouring and humbling to have the opportunity to walk alongside people as they chart their own paths.

Nat Kaminski (they/them) is the Harm Reduction Outreach & Peer Programs Manager at MOYO Health & Community Services and a co-founder of the Ontario Network of People Who Use Drugs (ONPUD). They also created the Peel Drug Users Network Online community, fostering peer connection and advocacy across the region.

Nat’s work bridges frontline service delivery, drug policy advocacy, and community-based research. They have co-authored and led projects on harm reduction, substance use, and drug policy, with publications featured nationally and internationally. Their research and consulting contributions focus on amplifying the voices of people with lived and living experience, advancing evidence-based harm reduction, and challenging systemic inequities.

A frequent speaker at conferences and symposiums across Canada, Nat brings both professional expertise and personal lived experience shaped by gender-based violence, incarceration, child welfare involvement, poverty, homelessness, and survival sex work. Their advocacy is grounded in advancing health equity, social justice, and meaningful inclusion of people who use drugs in policy and research.

Nat is located on Treaty 19 & 14 lands in Milton, Ontario.

Tiina is a Registered Social Worker and a Mental Health Therapist Tiina works primarily with people who have been incarcerated, their loved ones, people who do sex work and people who have experienced violence and trauma. Tiina is the current Executive Director at Rittenhouse.

Tiina’s lived experience is that of poverty, homelessness, drug use, sex work and incarceration. While incarcerated, Tiina became involved with Walls to Bridges and has over ten years of experience on facilitation and circle work. Tiina holds a Diploma in the Assaulted Women’s and Children’s Counsellor/Advocate Program, a Bachelor of Arts in Women’s Studies (earned while incarcerated) and a Master of Social Work. Tiina began as a frontline worker in shelters, drop-ins, sex worker organizations and safe consumption sites and has held roles such as frontline worker, case manager, supervisor, coordinator, executive director and consultant.

Meet the Project Team Members

Jessica Gaber is a Research/Program Coordinator with the McMaster University Department of Family Medicine and supports the coordination and facilitation of the Council as well as the program of prison health research at the department. She is a Registered Social Worker with a Master of Social Work from Wilfrid Laurier University and experience in three sides of social work practice: clinical work, community development, and research. She is now also undertaking a PhD in Health Policy at McMaster, where her thesis is focused on how to do health research with people who are incarcerated in a way that is more ethical, appropriate, feasible, and acceptable. Before joining the Department of Family Medicine, she worked in research at the Offord Centre for Child Studies, as well as in crisis intervention, mental health counselling, and community mental health both in Ontario and in western Africa.

Lindsay Jennings is a community advocate and researcher whose work is shaped by both lived experience and more than a decade of engagement with communities impacted by incarceration and police violence. She has worked closely with families who have lost loved ones in custody or through encounters with police, supporting them in navigating grief while pushing for systemic accountability.

Lindsay’s frontline career includes roles with the John Howard Society of Toronto and the Prisoners’ HIV/AIDS Support Action Network (PASAN), where she supported people directly affected by incarceration, reintegration, and prison health. Her passion sits in challenging the warehousing of people within provincial jails and amplifying the voices of those most harmed by systemic neglect.

She now brings her expertise into research and policy through her work with Tracking (In)Justice and the Prison Health Research Council, advancing public databases on deaths in custody and police-related deaths, and building initiatives led by people with lived experience. Lindsay also serves as a co-chair and committee member on several justice and health-focused initiatives, working to transform how systems respond to incarceration, health, and community reintegration.