Walking through the Rotunda at the SFU Burnaby campus, you may notice an open door that invites a glance into a bright and spacious room. The area is the resource centre and library at the Women’s Centre, a space open to all genders and adjoined to an around-the-clock lounge for self-identified women, first established over four decades ago.
Leah Horlick has stewarded the space for the last two and a half years — a relatively short period in the long history of the centre, but a substantial time in the minds of many students. Over this period, she has invited numerous students and members of the larger community to the centre to access support services, health resources, and the centre’s large collection of feminist literature.
The Peak sat down with Horlick last week as she prepared to embark on the next chapter of her career, which will take her off the mountain. The conversation reflected her experiences as a part of the Women’s Centre in recent years.
“It is so wonderful to be part of a workplace where I get to practice my own values every day,” Horlick mentioned, regarding the centre. “That is really important to me and it has been a real treat to get to do that here.”
Raised in Saskatoon, Horlick’s first encounter with Simon Fraser University was as the coordinator for the centre, which brought about a steep learning curve.
“Working in a community where the women’s centre is so old really changed [the] tone of a lot of the work,” she recalled, noting that her predecessor, Nadine Chambers, oversaw the centre for a decade. “I had an incredible legacy to learn about when I started. That was just a really invaluable opportunity to get to be part of a centre that has been able to make such an impact.”
The centre has been a part of the local community since it was first established in 1974, following a period of radical activism on the campus. Since its beginnings, the centre has developed substantially and is now a service under the Simon Fraser Student Society.
Horlick explained that she was attracted to the work because the structure of the centre allowed for a lot of flexibility in providing services and support for the community.
“The mandate is just so comprehensive; we are pro-feminist, pro-choice, anti-racist, sex-positive, and trans-inclusive,” she said. “One good example is the way that we approach sex positivity. Being able to provide accurate, up-to-date, non-judgemental sexual health information for people of all genders is so important to me and it also means that we can respond to the needs of our demographic.”
Horlick added that the diversity of the mandate is significant because a lot of communities have historically been marginalized by feminism, including transwomen and women of colour.
However, providing support for the community involves knowing the needs of the people who can use the centre as a resource.
“I’m not necessarily in touch with what is important to women on campus, what is important to marginalized people of all genders at the moment, so having volunteers, including [the Women’s Centre Collective], be able to keep me up-to-date on what’s going on on campus and have ears in different corners has been really helpful,” she said.
Since starting in her position at the Women’s Centre, the university has gone through many changes, including the development the first institution-wide sexual violence policy. The years have racked up a number of significant moments in the history of the centre and the campus.
For Horlick, the experience has been overwhelmingly memorable. When asked which instances stand out, she noted that there are too many to count.
“I have so many good memories of our pancake breakfast, that [was] one of the [funnest] days of the year. We [got] to blow the whole space open and [got] to have people of all genders in here, it [was] so great, by the end of the day everyone [was] covered in pancake batter and aware of a new service that they might not have known they can access,” she laughed.
Horlick also emphasised the development of the Hope and Safety program offered in cooperation with the Health and Counselling Services sexual violence counsellor which supports women who are survivors of sexual violence experienced at any stage in their life.
“It is just so nice to be part of a university where we can do that collaborative work,” she said.
Horlick noted that she wishes that the centre could have provided resources on the satellite campuses as well, yet one of the unique challenges that the centre faced was the isolation of the Burnaby campus.
It was also a struggle to try and make programming and resources accessible for members of the community who only spend a limited time at any of the university campuses because of other life circumstances, she said.
A large part of the coordinator role has also included crisis support for folks who walk through the doors of the centre. In terms of offering this support to members of the campus community over the years, Horlick said that the experience has been “profound and incredibly humbling.”
She described the process of peer support and crisis referral as reciprocal, as she offered informal counselling to community members and also learned how other people navigate challenges.
The most rewarding part of the job is knowing that the work has been able to make a difference, even though it may not be clearly visible.
“I think getting to be part of a large community that I have been invited into, and to be able to contribute in ways that seem small but may in fact be more significant than I could ever know, is really meaningful,” she said. “Providing a space where someone can come and quietly and confidentially access a library book, where someone can ask a question that may seem really innocuous but may in fact be a really big part of their process.”
“In the anti-violence sector, I think it is hard to get a sense of the concrete impact of your work because violence doesn’t go away. It is not like you are a firefighter and you put out the fire. There is always going to be another fire,” she continued.
However, Horlick said that she has noticed a positive shift in the atmosphere on campus around many of the issues that the centre has worked to address.
“Since I started, I feel like things on campus have changed so much,” she reflected. “The questions I notice people asking, there is a lot of nuance which is really important.”
“Some of the misconceptions that we face as a women’s centre, you know, like ‘why isn’t there a centre for men?’ . . . those stereotypes. I’m not hearing those as much as I used to and I really hope that that continues.”
Looking ahead, Horlick is certain that the centre will remain an important space and resource in the area.
“I’m really excited to have a new coordinator in the space, I think new energy is really important,” she concluded.
