CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. – The woman who’s been at the helm of the Canadian Red Cross as the P.E.I. director for the past seven years is leaving the organization.
Laura Johnson-Montigny is pursuing a new opportunity in the private sector. Her final day as P.E.I. director will be Monday, April 23.
Bill Lawlor, the Red Cross’ provincial director in New Brunswick, will also serve as interim P.E.I. director during the transition period.
“Working with the Red Cross has been so rewarding, thanks to the wonderful team we have on the Island, including our staff but especially our volunteers,” said Johnson-Montigny. “They truly are core to the Red Cross mission and it's always been inspiring to see how freely they give of their time to help others whenever and wherever needed.”
Since joining the organization in 2010, Johnson-Montigny led a campaign that raised $1 million and allowed the Red Cross to move from a small heritage building in downtown Charlottetown for more than 70 years to a new building that includes a disaster management and training centre on Paramount Drive.
Johnson-Montigny also negotiated funding support from the P.E.I. government that allowed the Red Cross to create part-time depots in O'Leary in 2014, and in St. Peters in 2016. This made it more convenient for Prince and Kings county residents to take advantage of a Red Cross program that provides free, short-term loans of wheelchairs, crutches, walkers and other safety and mobility aids for those recovering from illness, injury or surgery.
She also secured more stable, multi-year funding for other Red Cross programs like its long-running summer day camps that have been a tradition in P.E.I. since 1949 and became the nucleus of Red Cross swimming and water safety lessons now taught to one million Canadians coast-to-coast every year.
“In addition to directing all of our P.E.I. operations, she has supported disaster responses elsewhere in Canada, deploying to New Brunswick following its massive ice storm and prolonged power outages in February 2017, then a short time later to the record spring flooding in eastern Quebec, and to last summer's worst-ever forest fire season and evacuations in British Columbia," said Louise Castonguay, Atlantic vice-president of the Canadian Red Cross.
