Paul St. Clair

Paul St. Clair, Ph.D., was the executive director of the Toronto Roma Community Centre from its inception in 1998 until November, 2010. As an immigration counsellor for the last 23 years, he continues to assist Roma refugees with their immigration and settlement needs at a Toronto NGO, called CultureLink. He has been a pro-bono counsel at many Immigration and Refugee Board hearings. In addition, he is a past chair of TRAC, a Toronto organization assisting refugees in detention, as well as the past President of the Board of Sojourn House, a refugee shelter in Toronto. When the shelter received an eviction notice, this potentially disastrous situation became an opportunity to expand the 50-bed shelter into an 8-story new building with temporary accommodation for newly arrived refugees as well as 40 apartments for past refugees who require some further assistance in successfully settling in their new country.He grew up in the Slovak part of Czechoslovakia (1947–1968) and came to Canada as a refugee after the Soviet invasion of his homeland, in 1968. In 1982, he obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in sociology of education.