Allan Wade, C.M., Ph.D.
Recently appointed as a member of the Order of Canada for his role in developing Response-Based Practice.
“Violence is the most urgent and challenging problem of our times.”
Allan Wade, C.M., Ph.D. is co-founder of Response-Based Practice, an approach to therapy and other forms of direct service with adults and children, people who have been harmed by violence or who have committed violence, and their loved ones and community members.
Response-Based Practice is also dedicated to improving practice in public institutions that respond to violence, broadly defined; law enforcement, justice, family law, child protection, refuges/shelters, research, education, psychiatry, and psychology.
Ways to learn about Response-Based Practice
We offer courses, a certificate training program and in-person or remote presentations to groups of all sizes.
Publications and Media
Early in my career, thanks to meeting with some extraordinary people — colleagues and clients — I became interested in how people respond to and resist violence. In Response-Based Practice, we pay close attention to how people work to preserve and reassert their basic human dignity, and the dignity of others, when faced with violence and other forms of humiliation.
By honouring resistance, this approach more fully reveals the deliberate and strategic nature of violence and removes the blaming and pathologizing that is often aimed at victims/survivors. This is illustrated, for example, in my testimony to the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and LGBTQ2S+ people and analysis of Stockholm Syndrome — the illusion that became fact.
Gratitude and Acknowledgements
I owe a debt of gratitude to the Kaska Dene women of the Liard Aborginal Women’s Society. For more than 25 years, I have worked on Kaska homeland for and with the Liard Aboriginal Women’s Society (LAWS). I cannot adequately express my gratitude to the Kaska women of LAWS, whose cultural teachings and generosity of spirit have profoundly influenced my life and work.
Long term work of this type, involving extensive travel and participation in complex and sometimes unpredictable situations, is possible only with extensive support. I am deeply and eternally grateful to my life-partner, Cathy, whose support and guidance make all things possible and all things better.