Brown background with text reading "Quakers in Canada: News from around Canadian Yearly Meeting." Most of the text is yellow, but the Q is pale green.

Dear Friends,

Welcome to Canadian Yearly Meeting's fifth monthly electronic newsletter. Thanks to everyone who has been helping other Friends connect - you can help us reach more Friends in Canada by forwarding this message (so that other friends can subscribe at the link below) to individuals and/or your Monthly Meeting or Worship Group's email list, and by announcing this newsletter after worship and in upcoming Meetings for Worship with an Attention to Business. Your help in connecting Friends across the country is deeply appreciated!

Sign up

New Pendle Hill pamphlet on Race, Systemic Violence, and Retrospective Justice

"Dr. Harold Weaver of the BlackQuaker Project asks Friends to look at societal problems through new lenses: confronting systemic violence with antiviolence; acknowledging institutional and systemic racism, rather than merely individual racism; considering a retrospective justice program that compensates for and helps remove the historical inequities related to the transatlantic slave trade, chattel slavery, and their legacies – Jim Crowism, other forms of dehumanization and exploitation, police brutality, and the school-to-prison pipeline. This unjust world is maintained by misinformation and disinformation in the media, formal education, scholarship, and political discourse."

Read more
People kneel with their fists up in front of the curved building of Toronto's city hall.

Refugee sponsorship opportunity

Has your Meeting ever considered sponsoring an overseas refugee to Canada, but not known how to go about it, or how to raise the required funds? An exciting new opportunity is available to guide you through the sponsorship process, with funds already donated by Australian Friends among others.

Read more
A wood-paneled room, with pale blue floor and chairs arranged in a square around a table with a plant on it. All the chairs are reddish brown except one blue one.

Quaker outreach image

Steven Fick of Ottawa Monthly Meeting developed this lovely image - if you or your meeting have an example of outreach tools you've used, please consider emailing newsletter@quaker.ca so we can share your creativity! (And place your (unQuakerly) bets as to whether the person in this image is just wearing sandals, or toe socks and sandals.)
People kneel with their fists up in front of the curved building of Toronto's city hall.

The Western Half-Yearly Meeting epistle is ready!

"Greetings from Canadian Western Half-Yearly Meeting. Friends met online for the Fall Western Half-Yearly session in the midst of a second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in Canada. By now more people have become familiar with how to navigate Zoom, and Friends enjoyed being together once again. While it goes without saying that we would much rather be together in person, for the time being, this is the second-best option. The upside is that Friends that can't usually join us in person were able to. One Western Friend even joined us from the United Kingdom..."

Read more
A black and white sign with an image of a dove inside the letter Q. The sign's text reads, "Quaker Meeting Religious Society of Friends; all welcome."

Memorial Meeting for Anne Thomas

New Brunswick Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends and the family of the late Anne Thomas of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia invite you to attend an online Memorial Meeting for Worship where friends and family will gather to remember Anne. The meeting is scheduled to take place from 2:00 until 4:00 PM, Halifax, Nova Scotia time (GMT-4) on First Day (Sunday), November 8th, 2020. There are options to attend the Zoom meeting by computer with video and audio or by telephone with audio only.

Please register in advance for this meeting using the link below. After registering, allow some time to receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Register
A group of colourfully-dressed Quakers sit in two rows in a bright, white room.

Call for proposals for Quaker Peacemaking book

The Friends Association for Higher Education seeks contributions for a volume of essays exploring the future of Quaker peacemaking. Proposals can be from within any academic discipline as well as from the experience of practitioners. This volume is intended to consider possibilities for the future of Friends’ work for peace with justice. Though essays will draw upon the past and present, the goal is to consider where we go now, given the current state of our Society, our country, humanity, and the earth.

Proposals of 800-1000 words to be submitted by March 15, 2021, and the final essay will be between 4,000 and 8,000 words, including footnotes and bibliography.

Read more
A group of colourfully-dressed Quakers sit in two rows in a bright, white room.

Other events and news

  • Pendle Hill is offering an online workshop on Friends' Decision-Making and Clerking the weekend of November 20-22. Register by noon on November 2nd.
  • Attend an online Climate Justice Forum with For the Love of Creation, of which KAIROS is a leading organization. This event will introduce the work of the initiative and tell you how you can get involved. Sessions take place on Monday evenings starting November 2nd.
  • Beginning November 5th, join Canadian Friend's Service Committee at a webinar series on the topic of Shifting Punitive Perspectives. With the help of panelists, CFSC will examine the impacts of the existing criminal justice system, possible alternatives and next steps.
  • Friends General Conference has announced that their gathering will be hosted online in 2021 as it was in 2020 - learn more about their plans and put the dates in your calendar (June 27th-July 3rd).
  • A subscription page for The Canadian Friend is now available - subscribe to the print or electronic version!
A group of colourfully-dressed Quakers sit in two rows in a bright, white room.