Awarded annually by the Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs, on the recommendation of the Director of the Masters of Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership Program, to outstanding graduate students who demonstrate a strong potential for leadership and innovation in community engagement on issues of priority to local nonprofits, governments and businesses. These issues include but are not limited to: human and gender rights; Indigenous culture; environmental sustainability: youth employment; social enterprise; innovative finance; affordable housing; or sustainable food. The scholarship is endowed by Dr. Edward Jackson and Ms. Magda Seydegart in honour of the Jackson family’s commitment to strengthening community in Eastern Ontario and beyond.
The Family
In the 1940s, John McClintock (Jack) Jackson and his wife, Isabella Dickson Jackson, were co-founders of a dairy milk cooperative to assist farmers in the Kemptville area to sell their product to Montreal markets, enabling their own Mapleview Farm to flourish. Their son, John William (Bill) Jackson, was a career soldier in the Canadian army, a two-time UN peacekeeper, United Church Elder and award-winning horticulturalist, and also served as assistant dean at the Kemptville College of Agricultural Technology.
In the mid-1960s, Annetta (Anne) Knight Jackson, Bill’s wife, founded Maplewood School in Oxford Mills for underserved children with developmental and intellectual disabilities in the North Grenville area, working closely with their parents and the school board. Taking night and summer courses, she equipped herself with the administrative and educational skills to ensure the school’s success. Over time, as the Maplewood students progressed, Anne worked with other community members to set up a local nonprofit Community Living Association which, over time, provided a sheltered workshop and assisted housing for the Maplewood students, who by then were young adults. As the Association’s programs grew, Anne believed she needed additional skills for effective board leadership, and so enrolled at Carleton University, graduating at the age of 60 with a degree in law and psycholinguistics. For this 30-year accompaniment of her “kids”, who called her “Jackson,” Anne received the Canada 125 Medal.
Bill and Anne’s daughter, Elizabeth (Betty) Jackson Clost, and her husband Dan Clost, are community leaders through their church, music, and horticulture in Trenton. A former soldier and sign-language interpreter, Dan is a well-known folk musician and former gardening columnist. He also served as a professor with Loyalist College’s horticulture technician apprenticeship program, which he co-designed for Landscape Ontario. He is the recipient of that organization’s Garden Communicator Award of Excellence. The Upper Canada Chapter of Landscape Ontario has established the Dan Clost Scholarship for Continuing Education in Horticulture.
Betty served as a longtime manager of volunteers in the community support sector, especially in delivering transportation solutions connecting elderly and low-income patients to health services. In 2013, Betty received the Ontario Leading Women, Building Communities Award in recognition of her community-based work creating and maintaining successful partnerships. Upon retirement, she became co-chair of the grassroots group Our TMH, a broad-based citizens’ campaign formed in early 2015 to halt the closing and improve the services of Trenton Memorial Hospital. Its numbers quickly grew to a membership of 22,000. In recognition of her leadership, Betty received the Canada 150 Award. Following Betty’s successful heart surgery in 2024 and to celebrate Betty and Dan’s 50th wedding anniversary in 2025, the couple became donors to the Cardiology Clinic of the Kingston Health Sciences Centre.
Their daughter, Ellyn Clost-Lambert is a research analyst with Limestone District School Board in Kingston, supporting both K-12 curriculum and educational services. She is passionate about using data to move people to action and affect social change. Her research and evaluation experience includes visual histories, reconciliation and decolonization, human rights and equity, mental health and wellness, and Canadian and global political and social economy. Ellyn serves as a community representative on the Queen’s University General Research Ethics Board. The Closts’ younger daughter, technology specialist Robyn Clost, was a graduate student at Carleton University and is an active member and presenter in online communities.
Noah Jackson, Magda and Ted’s older son, owns NOVA Lawn Care, providing lawncare services in east Ottawa, Orleans, Rockland and Embrun, and is highly respected by his entrepreneur-peers and -partners in the region. Their younger son, Jacob Jackson, is a seed investor in tech startups and a venture investor in deep tech, based in Vancouver, with a strong commitment to environmental sustainability. His wife, Dr. Emily Jackson, provided frontline health care to low-income residents of Hamilton as a medical student and currently works at the British Columbia Cancer Agency, which has developed strong university, philanthropic and private partnerships.
Other members of the extended Jackson family are graduates of Carleton University, including, for example, business administrator Jennifer DeBien, and civil servant Tyler Patterson. Family members have been active as business owners, teachers, public servants, doctors, nurses, care workers, and technology professionals across the region. The family is deeply embedded in and committed to the prosperity and sustainability of Eastern Ontario. Looking ahead, it will be interesting to see how the fifth generation in this story, Magda and Ted’s granddaughters, Olivia Jackson (aged 10), Veronica Jackson (aged 8), Pippa Jackson (aged 21 months), and grand-niece August Lambert (aged 10), could build on this long family tradition of community engagement.
Lead Donors
From 1981 to 1993, Magda Seydegart served as Executive Director of the Human Rights Research and Education Centre in the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa. Grounded in her masters of adult education degree from St. Francis Xavier University, she developed programs for activists and scholars; designed a world-class training program for human rights educators; co-founded organizations advancing disability and women’s rights; chaired an NGO network on international human rights advocacy; and participated in the women’s movement, testing the equality sections of the Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Magda also served as a trainer in human and women’s rights to Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and as a consultant to the Department of Justice and the United Nations and served two terms on the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. For her distinguished career advancing human rights education, she received the Canada 125 Medal and the Ontario Leading Women, Building Communities Award. She also served for six years on the Ottawa region Board of Directors of Habitat for Humanity.
Edward (Ted) Jackson, Bill and Anne’s son, was a member of Carleton University’s graduate School of Public Policy and Administration from 1993 to 2014, with cross-appointments to the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs and Institute of African Affairs. As a tenured associate professor, he employed community-based learning in his teaching of project management, program evaluation, social economy, financing civil society, and higher education policy. The co-founder of the Carleton Centre for Community Innovation and the Carleton-World Bank Program for Development Evaluation Training and founding principal investigator for the Community First SSHRC project on community-based research, Professor Jackson also served as associate dean (research) in the Faculty of Public Affairs, chairing university-wide committees on community engagement and partnership and strengthening the outreach capacity of FPA’s 20 research centres. He is a recipient of the FPA Teaching Excellence Award and the Ontario Medal for Good Citizenship as well as awards from the Canadian Evaluation Society and the Responsible Investment Association of Canada, among other honours. In addition, Ted has served as an internationally recognized advisor to development agencies, development banks, foundations and the United Nations in 60 countries. He is the volunteer Chair of the Group of 78, a foreign-policy non-profit working for peace and disarmament, climate action and social justice.
Meet the Jackson Family Scholars in the MPNL Program:
Emma Wood, Toronto, 2021
https://carleton.ca/panl/2021/emma-wood-recipient-of-the-jackson-family-scholarship/
Katelyn James, Peterborough, 2022
https://carleton.ca/mpnl/2022/the-2022-recipient-of-the-jackson-family-scholarship-is-katelyn-james/
Sarah Thatcher, Huntsville, 2023
https://carleton.ca/mpnl/2023/sarah-thatcher-receives-jackson-family-scholarship/
Maggie Larocque, Vancouver, 2024
https://carleton.ca/mpnl/2024/maggie-larocque-wins-the-jackson-family-scholarship-for-2024/