Ontario Pharmacy Awards Recognize a Community Owner, Deprescribing Clinician and Technician Educator

The Ontario Pharmacists Association’s 2026 award roster spans four different kinds of pharmacy leadership: long-term advocacy, community ownership, primary-care medication review and technician education. The association listed the recipients for its September 30 joint ceremony with the Canadian Foundation for Pharmacy; local reporting on October 1 separately confirmed the Pharmacist of the Year recognition for Mark Stephens.

Mark Stephens, co-owner of the Roulston’s Pharmacy Group in Southwestern Ontario, is OPA’s Pharmacist of the Year. The association says he joined the business as a student intern in 1991 and has helped develop pharmacy locations that share space with other health professionals. Peter Zawadzki is its Lifetime Achievement recipient for decades of pharmacy advocacy, including work on reimbursement for professional services.

Aya Al-Kubaisy, a pharmacist with the Hamilton Family Health Team, received the Early Career Award. OPA highlights her work in medication optimization and deprescribing across complex patient care. Paco Lei is Technician of the Year. The association describes roles in public health, hospital and community pharmacy as well as teaching and continuing-education review.

Four routes into pharmacy leadership

OPA’s recipient biographies add useful context to the names. Mark Stephens’ connection to Roulston’s began as a student intern in 1991; after graduating from the University of Toronto in 1993, he continued in the business and helped develop locations that include space for other health professionals. OPA notes an earlier collaborative-service award in 2016. The current recognition is therefore not simply for owning pharmacies, but for a long career combining local service, mentorship and business development as described by the association.

Aya Al-Kubaisy’s Early Career Award reflects a different practice setting. OPA says she has worked across community, hospital and primary care roles in the UK and Ontario and now supports medication optimization and deprescribing with the Hamilton Family Health Team. It also says she is developing a clinical decision-support tool, DeRxAI. Development of a tool should not be mistaken for evidence of its clinical validation or adoption; the documented achievement here is her emerging work across care settings.

For technician practice, OPA identifies Paco Lei’s work in York Region Public Health alongside roles in transplant, hospital and community pharmacy. It also describes his continuing-education review and teaching at Centennial College and Humber Polytechnic. Peter Zawadzki’s Lifetime Achievement citation reaches further back: OPA credits him with decades of association leadership and dialogue with private insurers over reimbursement for pharmacist services. Together, the four profiles show that recognition can attach to clinical care, education, collaboration and policy work rather than one narrow career path. These are OPA’s accounts of its honourees, not independent measures of patient outcomes.

What the recognition points to

• Make mentorship visible in everyday practice, not only in award nominations.
• Give technicians defined opportunities to teach, review workflows and contribute across settings within their authorized scope.
• Build medication-review and deprescribing pathways that include follow-up, not a one-time list of suggestions.
• Track how collaborations with other health professionals improve access and continuity, not just how many services are delivered.

Those are Pharmasist editorial takeaways, not criteria or new requirements from OPA. The association’s own roster contains full biographies and award details.