It’s a regular afternoon for Nazreen Cameron as she prepares roti and chicken curry in her kitchen, when she gets the sudden urge to check her phone. She sees multiple missed messages alerting her she has received an award at UBC and asks her son for confirmation, assuming it to be a scam. “No, Mom,” he reassures her. “You got the award. $5,000.”
Cameron is a building service worker in custodial services with UBC Facilities, and is one of five recipients of the 2025 President’s Service Awards for Excellence. The top honour presented to staff at UBC, this award recognizes staff members’ noteworthy contributions to the university community. Since its inception in 1991, it has only been awarded to a custodial service worker on one other occasion among 170 past recipients.
Cameron remembers the moment vividly, her heart pounding when she received the news. “It was the biggest surprise of my lifetime. It meant a lot to me,” she said.
Before starting her role at UBC, Cameron worked at BCIT for 14 years. With the encouragement of her brother, who was then a UBC employee, Cameron decided to change jobs. She hasn’t looked back since. She worked in the P.A. Woodward Instructional Resources Centre for several years, and has been in the Wesbrook Building for the past 20.
Upkeep of Wesbrook Building is no easy feat. With a capacity of 325 people, WESB 100 is frequently used for examinations, and is roughly a two-to-three-hour cleaning job split between her and her coworker. Cameron enjoys her job, sharing that making students happy, helping with any problems and ensuring that the facility is clean are the aspects of her work that bring her the most joy. She speaks about interacting with students sitting in a room that needs to be cleaned, and how when she offers a different space for them to use instead, they immediately understand. “It makes you feel so nice inside, you melt right there [from] the way they talk to you. ‘Hi, sister’ — I have so many sisters, and I know so many brothers.”
In addition to approaching her custodial work with care, Cameron values making students feel supported in their journey at UBC. “I am so blessed with this building. I love it,” she said. “The students are awesome, the staff are awesome … We all get along very well.”
Whether it’s making someone smile or helping a student look for a room to study in, Cameron wants those she encounters to know people are there for them, especially since she often sees students going through difficult moments. “They’re coming from far [away], and sometimes their parents are not here either … they go through a really hard time and they struggle.” In these moments, Cameron offers them a hug, helping them realize that someone cares, and that they have a source of comfort and support. “There’s always a way to go,” she assures them. “There’s always a light at the end of the tunnel.”
An additional source of joy Cameron finds working on the UBC campus is the beauty it has to offer her. Originally from Fiji, she’s always loved water, so she’s grateful for being able to see the ocean from the campus’ Rose Garden. “It relaxes me … I always go for a summertime walk. I stand there, then I breathe deeply,” she said. “[It feels] like I won a lottery or something.” She identifies this as ‘her corner’ — a space where she can truly take time for herself.
Although Cameron has gained countless valuable relationships throughout her UBC career, she’s run into her fair share of challenges. A key example of this was the Wesbrook Building’s flood, caused by a leaking roof; large amounts of damaged material had to be thrown out, putting a lot of stress on the staff. Cameron and her coworkers handled it with grace, working to minimize damage. “With my experience of 25 years, I knew what to do … everything was done fast,” Cameron said. Despite the now-fixed roof, her care for the building shines through as she jokes about monitoring for any new leaks. “Inside me, I get scared. I still go and check [to make sure] everything is okay.”
Cameron also does upkeep of Wesbrook Building’s prayer room, one of five on campus. This space is reserved for students of all faiths to pray and reflect. Maintaining the room requires a bit more care than Cameron’s other responsibilities and has required her to build trust with the people who use the space. “We have to keep it very clean because [people] bow, they pray, they bow down right to the carpet. So lots of people don’t know about that,” she said.
Although many stories have stayed with Cameron over her time at UBC, she notes that receiving the President’s Service Award was the most significant. “This one will be with me forever,” she said. “[There is] nothing beyond this.” She spoke excitedly of getting to speak with UBC President Benoit-Antoine Bacon at the award ceremony, even jokingly practicing French with him: “I told him, bonjour!”
Accompanying the title, Cameron received a monetary prize to recognize her achievements, yet she affirms the experience was worth more than any price. “Money, I don’t care. But this — it means a lot. It’s so beautiful. I wish it’s going to happen to other people too,” she said.
Cameron’s family was pushing her to retire this year. But even after nearly 40 years working in Canada, she wasn’t ready to leave her work behind quite yet: “This building is not letting me go … It's a charm to this world.”
