Board of Directors
Chair and Vice Chair
Dr. Angelo Belcastro, Chair
Dr. Angelo Belcastro is currently professor and Chair of York University’s School of Kinesiology & Health Science. Previously he held a position at the University of New Brunswick, where he served as Vice President Academic and Professor of Kinesiology since 2003.
During his career Angelo has served as the founding Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Western Ontario. He also worked within the vice-president academic and provost’s office at Royal Roads University in Victoria, B.C., which is known as one of Canada’s exclusive blending learning institutions. This was preceded by serving as Director of the School of Rehabilitation Sciences in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, B.C.
As well as academic leadership roles, Angelo’s research interests are focused in two major directions, exercise physiology - looking specifically at the health and fitness benefits for children and youth through physical activity; and exercise biochemistry – understanding the processes underlying muscle damage and repair linked to protease activation and muscle metabolism during exercise.
Dr. Belcastro has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. He has served on a range of scholarly journal and editorial boards.
In addition to his academic interests, Dr. Angelo Belcastro’s professional contributions have been many with service to the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology, co-chair of Canada’s CSEP/Health Canada Steering Committee to develop Canada’s Physical Activity Guidelines and President-elect for the Canadian Council of University Physical Education, Kinesiology Administrators (CCUPEKA).
Cathie Kryzanowski, Vice Chair
Cathie is the General Manager of Saskatchewan in motion, a provincial movement aimed at increasing physical activity for children and youth. She is a former Chair of Coalition for Active Living.
Directors
Dr. Don Hunter
Don has a long history of work in municipal recreation and physical activity promotion in British Columbia and across Canada and now provides a wide range of consulting, including strategic and master planning, organizational and operations analysis, innovation and best practices, trends and issues analysis, facility and open space planning, business case analysis and performance management. He is a former Chair of the Canadian Parks and Recreation Association.
Dan Leeming
Dan is a founding partner of The Planning Partnership, a multi-disciplinary planning and design firm in Ontario. His area of expertise is in community planning at the regional and neighborhood levels, with an increasing amount of work focused on the development of healthy, sustainable communities. He is Adjunct Professor at the University of Guelph School of Landscape Architecture and lectures at a number of other universities.
Dr. François Trudeau
François Trudeau is the current Chair of the Département des sciences de l'activité physique at Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières where he has been a professor since 1992. His other academic appointments have included professor at the School of Human Kinetics at Laurentian University. His main research interests include the role of school and sport in the adoption of active living. During his free time he coaches cross-country skiing and running.
Dr. Brian Timmons
Dr. Timmons is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics. He also holds status as Associate Member in the Department of Kinesiology, is a Scientist with the McMaster Child Health Research Institute, an Investigator with the CanChild Centre for Childhood Disability Research, and is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Physical Education and Kinesiology at Brock University. Dr. Timmons was recruited into the Department of Pediatrics to continue the research program previously led by the late Dr. Oded Bar-Or. Today, this program is known as the Child Health & Exercise Medicine (CHEM) Program.
Officers
Dr. Mark Tremblay, Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Tremblay is the Director of the Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute. His research interests include assessing the importance of physical education and physical activity on the health and wellness of children, and especially how physical activity behaviour affects future health outcomes. Dr. Tremblay has published extensively in the areas of childhood obesity, physical activity measurement, exercise physiology and exercise endocrinology.
Elio Antunes, Founder and Senior Advisor
A visionary leader, Elio has more than 20 years of experience in the physical activity sector. Prior to joining ParticipACTION as Chief Operating Officer and Vice President of Partnerships, he was Executive Director of the Ontario Physical and Health Education Association (Ophea). Elio founded Active Healthy Kids Canada in 1994 and continues to play an instrumental role in the strategic direction of the organization.