NEPEAN: After arriving in Canada as a survival a Polish concentration camp, Alice Basarke didn’t plan a career helping refugees, the disabled and abused women.
Nepean’s 1993 Citizen of the Year says it just happened that way.
Basarke, 51, has been helping people since she came to Nepean in 1967. Born in a concentration camp, she arrived in Canada as a refugee in 1949,
“If you see somebody in your neighborhood who is in need, it is natural to see what you can do to help,” Basarke said.
Basarke spent much of her time helping other refugee women and helped establish Nelson House, a Nepean women’s shelter in 1992. Her involvement with the local Bosnian community prompted her to distribute a petition asking Parliament to declare rape 4 war crime.
More than 600 people have signed the petition.
“I regard many of the atrocities in Bosnia as abuse of women,” Basarke said.
“We must talk about this openly and convince the United Nations to declare rape as a war crime. That is the first step to stopping the rape of thousands of women by soldiers involved in the conflict.
In 1978, Basarke established the Indian Ladies Club for women who felt isolated after emigrating from India. Married to a Sikh, Basarke later joined the Sikh Women’s Forum which concentrated on social and human rights problems affecting women in the Sikh community.
Her concern with the loneliness and isolation of seniors in the Sikh community prompted her to teach English to older women,
Basarke was an executive assistant with the World Sikh organization from 1989 to 1992.
Article extracted from this publication >> April 30, 1993
