Tom Best
Executive Director
Tom joined BCFI in January of 2022, having served as the Executive Director of First Book Canada for 10 ½ years. Under his leadership First Book Canada earned Charity Intelligence Top 10 Canadian Impact Charity rankings in 2020 and 2021.
He has enjoyed a distinguished career in the Canadian book publishing industry – including positions with HarperCollins, Raincoast Books, CDG Books, Key Porter Books and H.B. Fenn, as well as being with Frontier College’s Board of Governors, the National Reading Campaign and the “Read ON Canada!” program, a coalition of literacy groups and food banks working together to inspire reading in kids across Canada.
Jeannie Kwan-Brydges
Program Coordinator
Jeannie joined our charity in November 2021. A graduate of Ryerson University, Jeannie brings to BCFI over 20 years of experience in managing, planning and implementing projects, products and programs.
Rev. Dr. Carol Finlay O.Ont., M.S.M. is the Founder of Book Clubs for Inmates, now in its fourteenth year. She is also an Anglican priest and former high school and university professor.
VOLUNTEERS
Book Clubs for Inmates (BCFI) is supported by over 120 volunteers who generously donate their time as book club facilitators, parolee support, readers, and others who have found various ways to share their talents with BCFI.
Honorary Members
Margaret Atwood, CC, Oont
Honorary Patron
Canada’s preeminent writer. Her novels are dearly loved by BCFI’s book clubs members. As well, she has been an outspoken advocate of the prison farms, and has written about prison conditions for women in her 1996 novel, Alias Grace, and about performing Shakespeare in prison in her 2016 novel, Hag-Seed, currently being adapated for performance by Prison Performing Arts in St. Louis, Missouri.
Ian Binnie, CC Q.C.
Honorary Chair
Eminent retired Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. Ian has been a supporter of BCFI since its beginning.
BOARD OF Directors
Max Binnie, Board Chairperson
A Department of Justice litigator and former political staffer living in Ottawa.
Elder Caroline Buckshot
In-House Elder for the Justice Institution of British Columbia (JIBC) and Elder for the Parole Board of Canada (PBC)
Joanie McEwen
Writer, labour mediator/arbitrator in Vancouver, and author of Innocence on Trial, The Framing of Ivan Henry (2014).
Erna Redekopp
A retired healthcare management consultant and nurse educator living in Toronto.
Shelagh Rogers OC
A Canadian broadcast journalist based in British Columbia and former chancellor of the University of Victoria.
Stephanie Sinclair
Publisher, McClelland & Stewart and Hazlitt, Vice President, Penguin Random House Canada