An Amazing Experience

I want to share an amazing experience with you.

In September, the world was shocked and horrified by images of the small dead body of Aylan Kurdi, the 3-year-old Syrian boy who drowned with his mother, Rehana, and brother, Galib, as they tried to flee from Syria via Turkey to Europe, hoping eventually to end up in Vancouver.  There were the to-be-expected reactions, people who felt it was inappropriate to publish images of dead children, people who wrung their hands and said “What is the world coming to?”, and I’m sure there were many people who also felt that this problem was much too big for me to handle and nothing will change so I’m just going to forget about this and move on with problems I can solve.

But for some reason, the photos of this dead child, and the fact that his family had been trying to reach Canada for years, really galvanized many people.  For me, it began with a dinner conversation with my husband, asking each other if there was anything we could do to help make sure that there are no more photos of dead babies washing up on the shores.  We knew we couldn’t do anything on our own, as much as we wanted to.  So we decided to call a Town Meeting, open to the public, to see if there was anyone else in our town who felt the same way we did, and to see if we might work together to offer a refugee Syrian family a new home and new hope.

We have lived in this small town of 5500 people (plus 2200 university students) for 22 years, and we know that there are many gracious, warm-hearted, generous people living here.  We hoped that perhaps there might be 40 or 50 people who would show up.  In reality, we expected about 25.  After all, people are busy raising children, volunteering, working at their careers, and a myriad of other things.  We hoped that maybe, with a small group of people, we might be able to raise enough money over several months to eventually bring a family to our town.

The meeting was called for a Sunday night in late September.  Almost 100 people showed up, and another dozen or so contacted us to say that they were unable to attend but they wanted to help.  At the end of that meeting, which included information about the Syrian situation and refugee sponsorship, the gathered community members were asked to consider 3 questions:  Is sponsoring a family in Sackville the right way to proceed?  Do we have here and beyond, the collective will to support a family?  And if yes, should we form a Steering Committee?

I waited with bated breath as the crowd contemplated and discussed these questions in small groups.  And then my husband asked the group to reassemble, and the answers were given.  Each question received an overwhelming and resounding “yes.”  And that’s not all.  The crowd enthusiastically endorsed consideration of sponsoring not just one family, but two or maybe even three.

Shortly after, the Steering Group was organized, with my husband as Chair, and me as a member, and we got things underway to figure out how to finance and support a refugee family.  The Steering Committee has met weekly, we have held two additional public meetings,  and several working groups have been formed and tasked with specific responsibilities such as fundraising, communications, housing, welcoming and orientation, to name a few.  At the moment, we have almost 100 people actively working on those committees, with more people becoming involved every day.

Two months later, we have raised enough money to submit our first application, and almost certainly by the end of the year, we will have enough for a second application.

This in itself isn’t overly remarkable.  In many other small towns in Canada and probably elsewhere in the world, similar things are happening.

We live in a small university town.  While our students and our townspeople generally get along well, it is fair to say that there has been a bit of a rocky history between Town and Gown in recent years.  The university is a major employer and the professors are largely CFAs (Come From Aways) and have a higher level of education than the average townie.  Occasionally, this causes some resentment, although townspeople are quick to admit that the town benefits in many ways by having the university here.  Because the university is full of experts and scholars, sometimes projects which are supposed to be collaborative turn into projects that are highly directed and influenced by the university.

So when we decided to host our first public meeting, at the University Chapel, we wanted to make sure that we emphasized from the first minute that although we were hoping the university community and the University itself would be active and engaged participants, this was not meant to be a University Project.  If it was to succeed, it would have to be a truly collaborative venture involving many different aspects of the town. 

In that context, one of the things that makes this coalition so remarkable is the high degree of collaboration, excitement, and dare I say, even camaraderie within our community.  Almost everyone wants to participate, to “do their bit,” to the point that people have spotted my husband walking in town and pulled over in their cars so they could jump out and volunteer for something.  Our committees have ordinary folks from the town working side by side with university administrators, students working with clergy, retired folks working with young professionals, professors working with store clerks.  This level of collaboration is, I believe, practically unheard in our town.

Another thing that moves me is just how many people with specific skills have volunteered to participate.  A retired quartermaster is helping head up the committee responsible for collecting, organizing and storing household items.  How great is that?  Freelance journalists and writers have volunteered to organize communications.  Artists have designed wordmarks to make our name immediately recognizable and produced cards and letterhead for us to use.  A number of Arabic speakers have volunteered their translation services.  Who knew there would be more than one Arabic speaker in a small Maritime town??  One of the people on our Steering Committee has just recently retired from a career working with Citizenship and Immigration Canada.  Her area of work?  Helping process refugees. 

My experience working on various committees is that they tend to be pretty insular.  A committee is formed to work on a project, the ideas generally come from within that small group of people, and reports are made to Boards or to organizations or to bigger committees.  There isn’t a lot of room for outsiders to actively participate unless they are specifically asked to do so by the committee, there’s not much opportunity for organic creativity from outside the committee.  This coalition, however, has inspired brilliantly creative initiatives from a variety of groups and individuals.  Our local Farmer’s Market, for example, recently had 100 canvas bags manufactured to promote the market.  They decided to sell these bags for $20 each.  That $20 will be turned into a $20 voucher for goods from the Farmer’s Market, and those vouchers will be turned over to our families for their use.  The Market vendors’ reasoning is that not only will the Farmer’s Market benefit from having increased publicity, as you would expect, but also – and the fact that they so carefully considered these things really touched me – that the new families would be introduced to good, local, fresh food, and most importantly, would be immediately enabled to begin to form relationships, not only with the vendors, but also with regular market-goers.  (And by the way, on their FIRST MORNING of sales, they sold 79 bags, and 4 days later, I hear there might not be any left). 

Other community groups have donated freewill offerings to our coalition.  A drama production commemorating Remembrance Day (our first influx of cash!) and a Christmas Concert by our local citizen’s band are only two examples.  Sunday school children made cookies and sold them at the last Midnight Madness.  Word is that the high school is holding a week long bake sale.  The university library is donating its book fines.  And the list goes on.

Individuals have made financial donations, big and small, and every dollar has helped.  Others have donated time and resources.  An expert knitter has volunteered to knit mittens and scarves, which will be much appreciated when our families arrive in the middle of a Canadian winter.  Some of the football players from the university have volunteered to help move furniture when the time comes.  People have volunteered to provide transportation, to care for children, to teach English and provide tutoring.  A former university student, who is from Syria, wants to be here when our first family arrives.  There are so many more examples of people filled with enthusiasm and goodwill, that it is truly overwhelming.

We do face challenges.  We don’t know what situation our families will come from, whether they will be dealing with the aftermath of trauma and violence.  We remind ourselves that they haven’t chosen to leave their homes, they simply didn’t have a choice; so while we are excited they are coming here, they will almost certainly have a mixture of feelings which includes sadness at the prospect of leaving their homeland forever.  They might decide that they want to live in a bigger centre, with a mosque if they are Muslim, or a place with more ethnic diversity.  And there are one or two citizens who are not happy to welcome refugee families, and they have gone out of their way to spread their ignorant bigotry to try to create hatred and fear in our town.

The good news is that the positives vastly outweigh the challenges.  The negative responses have been so negligible and almost pathetic (really, only one person consistently, out of the entire town) that they have done nothing to dampen the spirits of the rest of the community (in fact, I think they have made some of us more determined than ever).  And, as one of the Steering Committee members reminded us recently, these families are coming out of desperate situations.  Whether they successfully integrate into our town, or somewhere else, our community has come together in this time and this place to give them the greatest gifts we can imagine – the gifts of hope, joy, peace and love, and most importantly, the gift of life.  And that’s what this season of Advent, leading up to Christmas, is about.

I am beyond proud of our town, of the generosity of spirit and the commitment being shown to people who so far, remain perfect strangers.  I am exceedingly grateful to be a small part of this overwhelming, exciting experience, which will be life-changing not only for our new families, but also, I’ll wager, for the rest of us.

For me, this is true Christian hospitality, a gift that invites people to come in, simply because they are God’s people.  We invite them in because they have needs, and we can provide assistance; and we invite them in also recognizing that we might be changed by them, by our encounter with them, and that the divide of “us” and “them” might itself be broken down.

I can’t wait to welcome our families in person. 

My faith and my politics

Well.  I wasn’t going to turn my blog into a political platform.  However, I have been accused of being anti-Christian or anti-Biblical because I have made no secret that I am staunchly anti-Harper and I am hoping that the Conservative government will be booted out of office in less than two months.  I am sure I’m not the only one.

The Christian right, as you might know, supports Harper because he claims to be a Christian, and he is pro-Israeli (which is important to the Christian right because in order for Jesus’ second coming to occur, Israel has to have political control over Jerusalem – and that is a vastly over-simplified explanation).  There might be other reasons they support Harper, but those are the two biggies. 

I also claim to be a committed Christian.  My faith is central to everything about my life.  I am not perfect, in fact I am far from it, and I would never presume to think that I know why things happen and why people are the way they are.  But I think it is important, even in all my imperfections, that I take an opportunity to outline why I am not and never will be a Harper supporter, and why I believe that my position is supported by my Christian beliefs.

Several times now in the past few months when I have posted anti-Harper opinions on Facebook, I have been reprimanded by some of my friends with reference to the Bible verse that tells us that we should pray for and support our leaders.  I assume that this refers to 1 Timothy 2, which reads: First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.  Or the passage from Romans 13: Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.

I always respond with a comment along the lines that I am praying for Stephen Harper.... in fact, I am praying really hard that after October 19, he will no longer be the leader of our beautiful country, and we can go about trying to repair some of the damage his government has done.  As you can imagine, this is not the response that I am supposed to give, as a “good” Christian (me being a “good” Christian is a whole other issue...).

According to my friends, these passages say that our authorities are given power according to God’s will, God has a plan and a mission for these leaders, and if I speak out against them or “resist” their leadership, I am going against my Christian faith.  As Christians, then, we are to prayerfully support our leaders, without question and without criticism.  Maybe that’s a good principle.  But let’s examine that a little bit.  According to that interpretation, if Hitler, Idi Amin, Osama bin Laden, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mussolini, Ghadafi, Marcos, Castro, or Duvalier, just to name a few, were my leader, I would be obligated to prayerfully support their ideals and their actions, because the Bible tells us to.  (Or does the Bible actually mean it only applies to Christian leaders?  Because if that’s the argument, I would like to point out that those passages were written when non-Christian governments, i.e. the Romans, were in power in the Holy Land, so if you are going to be literalist, it must apply to any and every governing authority).

I am not a theologian, but I do think a lot about what I believe and how that should affect my daily life.  I think about someone like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran minister of the gospel in Nazi Germany, who stared evil in the face, and decided that as a Christian, he could not prayerfully (or morally) support the evil he observed in his country’s leader; he was ultimately executed by his own government for daring to try to eliminate the evil influence from his country.  I think of someone like Archbishop Oscar Romero, who spoke out against the government-sponsored injustices and murders taking place in El Salvador in the 1970s and 1980s, and was assassinated for living his faith.  Their actions clearly did not support the biblical injunctions to submit to the governing authority.  Although the issues facing most Canadians are very different from those in Nazi Germany or El Salvador, I think I am in pretty good company when I say that my very faith will not allow me to support any leader who promotes hatred, distrust, corruption, dishonesty, injustice, or any other morally reprehensible behaviour, whether they are Liberal, Conservative, NDP, Green or Rhino.

I base my personal faith on the New Covenant that was made through Jesus.  I try to think about what Jesus taught through his words, his life, his interactions with people.   The Jesus that I know didn’t teach hate.  The only time he got angry was when he was faced with hypocrisy and injustice.  The Jesus that I know taught love and justice for all.  In fact, he went out of his way to show love for every marginalized person he met.  The Samaritan woman at the well.  The tax collector. The adulteress.  In 2015, maybe we could include the aboriginal woman who is missing or murdered.  Or the person struggling with mental health issues.  Or the homeless person.  Or the Palestinian.  (Would Jesus have sanctioned the killing of Palestinians, many of whom are innocent children and bystanders, by western-backed Israeli governments?  Would he?  I think not.  Even for the sake of Jerusalem.  My tax dollars, and yours, support this injustice.  To me, that’s a sobering thought.  And it’s only one of many injustices.  That’s even more sobering.)
 
I cannot speak for other faith traditions, but for those of us who profess to be Christians living in a democratic society, I believe that we have the responsibility to elect leaders, regardless of their personal faith traditions, who reflect the values our faith teaches.  I believe that as Christians we have a responsibility to reflect on whether our current government’s actions and policies truly reflect the ideals that Jesus taught and lived.  If we support leaders who are dishonest, hypocrites, cheaters, liars, and willing to sacrifice the welfare of others for their own gain, I believe we will be individually and collectively judged for that support. 

Walter Rauschenbusch was a theologian of the social gospel a little over a century ago.  He told a parable based on the story of Pontius Pilate, who washed his hands in front of the raucous crowd demanding that Jesus be crucified, a symbol that he was relinquishing his responsibility to take a stand, and delivering Jesus into the hands of the crowd. 

On the eve of the crucifixion Pilate’s Washbowl disappeared from the palace. Nobody knows who took it. Some accused Judas Iscariot of selling it; but that is plainly a libel, because Judas was honest enough to go and hang himself. At any rate, ever since that time, the Washbowl is abroad in the land, carried by infernal hands wherever it is needed, and people are constantly joining the invisible choir which performs its imperceptible ablutions therein. The politician who suppresses principles because they might endanger the success of the party; the good citizen who will have nothing to do with politics; the editor who sees a righteous cause misrepresented and says nothing, because it might injure the circulation; the deacon who sees a clique undermining a pastor’s position and dares not create a disturbance ... All of these are using Pilate's Washbowl.

In the last election, 61.4% of eligible voters chose to exercise their right to vote.  Of those, 39.62% voted for Stephen Harper’s government.  I am no mathematician, but by my figuring, that means that only about 25% of Canada’s population actually elected Harper’s Conservatives.  That does not sound like a healthy democracy at work.  So I am advocating for change that starts with voting.  People have fought for our right to vote.  We owe it to our loved ones, our aging parents, our spouses, our children, to vote, and to vote wisely.  We owe it to our society to take a stand, to not be the people who are washing their hands in Pilate’s Washbowl.  And we owe it to our society and our country to hold our leaders accountable after the election, no matter who is elected.

I do not expect everyone to agree with my views, just as I do not agree with everyone else’s views.  But that is part of living in a democratic country.  And if anyone wants to criticize me for being anti-Christian or anti-Biblical, I will point out that for me, as a Baptist, my right to vote and to advocate according to my beliefs and my conscience is part of my legacy of soul liberty, which very simply means that I answer only to God on matters of conscience and faith.  That means that I also must respect every person’s right to soul liberty, no matter how much I might disagree.  A friend of mine often uses a quotation that is attributed to Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” – an appropriate quotation for both a Baptist and a believer in democracy.

And yes, no government is perfect, and the federal Liberals have a lot to answer for too.  But I respectfully disagree with those who believe that the Conservatives have enacted God’s plan for Canada. As is my right.

The prairies

I spent a large portion of my growing up years on the prairies, in Saskatchewan for four years, and in Manitoba for six years, with another two years in the foothills of Alberta.  When I moved away, thirty plus years ago, I left a little bit of myself there, and I have never really felt whole since.

This summer, to celebrate our 30th anniversary, my husband and I decided to return to the prairies, where it all started for us.  We had an amazing, refreshing, nostalgic twelve days in Manitoba (including a weekend foray to Regina), spending time in the city, the country and the beautiful Riding Mountain National Park, with friends, family, and with each other. 

While we were there, I compiled a list of all the things I miss about Manitoba.  Some of these things do not in themselves make Manitoba different from other places, but the sum of them all is uniquely prairie. 

So here, without further ado, and in no particular order, is my list.

•    Ukrainian churches
•    Mennonite food
•    Stucco houses
•    Enormous old trees rising out of the fields, probably elm or oak...
•    Black, black earth
•    Brilliant yellow canola fields stretching literally as far as the eye can see













 


•    Ditto for wheat fields (at this time of the year, a gentle green, but slowly ripening to a soft golden colour)
•    Decent highways... the worst highways in Manitoba are still better than some of the best highways in the Maritimes
•    Watching an oncoming vehicle for 5 miles
•    Oceans of flax
•    The slightly skunkish smell of canola and the sweet smell of clover
•    Dusty gravel roads – and being able to watch a vehicle’s path by following the dust trails on the horizon
•    Crops we saw: flax, canola, wheat, barley, beans (soybeans?), sunflowers, potatoes, alfalfa, corn

•    Hutterites
•    Jackpines
•    Back alleys in the cities
•    Gophers and meadowlarks
•    Electrical sockets in parking lots for block heaters

•    Sloughs and bluffs
•    Fallow fields
•    Grain elevators (there are some old ones still standing)

•    Super long freight trains
•    Hawks.  Lots of hawks.  More hawks in two weeks than I see in a year in Sackville.
•    Wildflowers everywhere: clover, Indian paintbrush, wood lilies, anemone, prairie smoke, harebells, black eyed Susans, gallardia, and a gazillion others

•    One million dragonflies
•    Endless blue, blue skies... with the fluffiest white clouds.... that go on forever
•    Cities and towns that suddenly turn into wheat fields, and wheat fields that suddenly turn into cities and towns
•    Roads and streets that go north-south or east-west.  Most of the time, you can figure out where you are.
•    Riding Mountain National Park
•    Whiskey jacks

•    Oil pumps
•    Thunder and lightning
•    Summer evenings that last forever, with a sun that takes forever to set.  At 10:15 p.m. a week ago, the sky was still light.
•    Beaver dams
•    Driving through flat prairie, rolling hills with tree bluffs, and forest all in the same day

What I don’t miss:
•    Horseflies
•    Hornets/wasps
•    Ticks

Sounds of life

This morning, while I was walking on the edge of the marsh, I was reminded of this column I wrote several years ago.  In its original form, it was published in Mount Allison University’s student newspaper, The Argosy, as a guest writer for Through Stained Glass, the weekly reflection from the University Chaplain (whom I happen to know!).

Like pretty much anywhere in North America, bikers and runners are fairly frequent sights on our streets and roads.  I often see them near my home and out on the marsh.  Almost always, they are listening to some form of electronic device.  Young people, likewise, always seem to be plugged into their tunes.  In order to even start a basic conversation, you must wait for them first to notice you, and then to take out their ear buds. 

This morning, I went for a walk on the marsh.  I made a conscious effort to listen as I walked along the path.  These are the sounds I would have missed if I had been plugged into my iPod (yes, I still have an iPod!).  The sound of the water lapping at the edge of the lake, thanks to the heavy northwest breeze.  Someone mowing their lawn.  Cattle bawling as the tractor brought their morning bale of hay.  The squishing of their feet as they walked through the muddy farm yard.  The breeze in the newly formed leaves and the unmown hay.   The clear, sweet song of the song sparrow.  A robin chirping.  The water from the stream gently passing under the bridge.  The distant sound of traffic on the highway.  The loud buzzing of a very large bumblebee.  My own breaths.  And above everything, the soft, high whistles of cedar waxwings.

If I were walking in an urban downtown, I would have heard different sounds.  Perhaps car brakes, the sound of many feet pounding the pavement, car horns and engines, the squeaking of a traffic light waving in the wind, a cell phone (or 9 or 10) ringing,  doors opening and closing, the voices of people in conversation with companions (or with themselves), coins rattling in a tin can held out by a panhandler.  “The music of the traffic in the city,” as Petula Clark says in her classic song “Downtown.”

Listening helps us to connect with our surroundings.  So does the sense of smell.  In Sackville, we sometimes smell the salt air, which reminds us of our proximity to the Bay of Fundy and ultimately the Atlantic Ocean.  Out where I live, we frequently smell farm smells.  Mostly, it is bearable, and sometimes, like the when we pass a tractor pulling a very full tank of liquid manure, it’s enough to make our eyes water and our lungs gasp for fresh air.  I have often said that the every day smells of the barns don’t bother me at all.  They represent the honest, hard work of producing food, and remind us of our connection to our agricultural roots.

We are all guilty of being “plugged into” things that prevent us from connecting with our surroundings.  If it isn’t the seemingly ever–present music device, it is a mobile phone ear piece, or perhaps a social networking site on our laptops, or in the case of parents, maybe we are “plugged into” our children, or our careers, or the stress of trying to accomplish all the tasks in our busy lives.  We are so connected with our technology and our own lives that we become disconnected from our surroundings, and more importantly, from the people surrounding us. 

The Chapel on the Mount A campus is one place which helps us reconnect with our surroundings and those around us.  On any given day in the Chapel, there are a myriad of sounds that can help us connect with other people, with ourselves and with that which is bigger than any of us.  I always think of the Chapel as a quiet place, until I go in during an organ student’s practice time.  There is something about the largeness of the chapel that seems to inspire organists to open up the stops as much as possible, and the result is so much loudness that it is sometimes scary.  Other times, it is so quiet you can hear the occasional voices of people outside.  I have listened to the wind against the stone walls, and the rain against the stained glass.  I have heard the voices of choirs and soloists, the notes of flutes and trumpets, the strumming of guitars, and the lovely mellow tones of a euphonium echo off the sandstone walls. You can always hear the heavy doors squeaking closed when someone is late for chapel, no matter how carefully they enter.

Sackville’s own poet laureate, Douglas Lochhead, wrote:

life
is listening

is finding
sounds

is feeling
rhythms

in all
things

life
is waiting

is standing
here and there

is saying
words

is praying
everywhere

I hope today, wherever you are, you have the opportunity to find the sounds and feel the rhythms that connect you with the world and the people around you.

Fox River

I’ve been more neglectful than usual in finishing up a post (and that’s saying something!).  I was working on a reflection of Mother’s Day and motherhood, and it wasn’t coming together the way I wanted it to, so I put it aside.  My intention was to finish it this weekend, and post it.

Instead, I am writing about Prince Edward Island.  Again.  We were here just about a year ago, and at that time, I wrote about how magical a place this is for me.  I honestly had no intention of writing about PEI this weekend. 

But circumstances change.  I discovered, when we checked in to our cottage yesterday, that this will be the last summer we will be able to rent it.  The owners have been wanting to retire for some time now, and they have decided this is the year.

Once in a while, if you’re lucky, you find somewhere that immediately feels special, where you feel an instant connection with the place, the scenery, the ambiance.  I have been fortunate enough to find places like that several times throughout my life.  Fox River is one.

Fox River Cottages are owned by Belinda and Glen Machon, in Murray Harbour, Prince Edward Island.  History runs deep here.  There have been people living in this area at least since the Acadian Expulsion in 1755; likely both the Acadians and Mi’kmaq had settled in this area at some point before then.  Machons were among a group of immigrants from Guernsey in 1806.  Like much of PEI, agriculture has played an important part in the life of Murray Harbour, but the dominant culture here is the sea.  There are at least half a dozen wharves within a 5 or 6 minute drive of the cottage.  As I write this, it is lobster season, but mussels, tuna, clams, oysters and crabs are also caught in season.  The lore of the sea holds a certain romantic appeal for me, growing up as I did mainly in the landlocked prairies, and one of the most enjoyable things about Fox River has been watching the fishing boats coming and going, and hearing the pulse of their engines early in the morning and throughout the day.

I think the first time we stayed here was almost exactly ten years ago.  We were looking for somewhere special to celebrate our 20th anniversary, and my husband happened upon the web page for Fox River.  It looked quiet, and lovely, and peaceful, and it was affordable.  When we arrived, it felt like home.

Since that first visit, I have been back several times.  I came with my kids, my parents and my brother’s family one year, and at various other times, I have brought my daughter, friends, and my husband.  I haven’t been here every year, but I have probably been here at least ten times in the past ten years.  I have recommended Fox River to many people, in the hope that they would find it as peaceful and relaxing as I have.

This place has been a haven for me.  I have spent some of the most near-perfect days in this place.  One afternoon in particular will always stand out in my mind.  It was June, and I came with a friend.  My friend had other plans, so she left me at the cottage by myself.  It was a perfect sunny, warm day.  I spent the day sitting on the deck watching the lobster boats, and when it got too hot, I moved into the screened in porch.  I walked on the beach, ate when I felt hungry, read, and had a nap in the sunshine.  I was completely alone and I loved every second of it. 

During our visit last year, the weather was uncooperative.  It was cool and rainy, and we were pretty much confined to the cottage.  While my husband bemoaned the lack of good cycling weather, I curled up in the porch with a blanket, a stack of books, and a hot cup of tea, and spent the time watching the lobster boats and the bird life.  It was another almost perfect day. 

We have been lulled and soothed by the rhythm of the ocean tide, the sound of the waves on the shore and the boats in the water.  We’ve found hundreds of blue starfish on the beach here, as well as mussel, oyster, clam, snail, and scallop shells, beach glass, and the shells of crabs.  We’ve watched herons, osprey, bald eagles, terns, cormorants, gulls, and rabbits.  Ironically, although PEI is noted for its abundance of foxes, and we’ve seen foxes many times on the Island, we have never seen one at Fox River (edit: the day after I posted this, a little fox trotted along the shore). 

I am sure there are hundreds of other wonderful, peaceful, and beautiful places here on PEI.  And maybe we will find another cottage where we will want to return year after year.  But I can’t imagine any of them will evoke the same feelings as Fox River. 

I’m hoping to squeeze one more visit in the fall before they close for the last time.  I don’t know if it will happen.  I am happy for the Machons, that they are taking the time to do the things they have always wanted to do.  They are lovely people, and they deserve their retirement.  I am exceedingly grateful for the chance encounter on Google that originally brought us here, and I am grateful for the opportunities I’ve had over the past years to retreat to this lovely haven.  I will miss Fox River Cottages, and I will treasure my memories of time spent in this place.

Sunrise at Fox River (photo courtesy of John Perkin)

Family and all that...

I have been thinking about my family lately.  Specifically, my dad’s family.  There have been some changes recently, and there are inevitably more to come.  Sadly, my dad’s generation is almost gone, and that realization has caused me to reflect on my family.

I am almost the youngest of about 23 cousins on my dad’s side.  As a child, I felt isolated from this side of the family, mostly because we lived far away from them and rarely saw them.  When we did get together, most of my other cousins were already adults and they didn’t really want to hang around with us younger kids. 

My dad’s family was Mennonite.  My grandparents started off fairly well, but in the 1920s, they were pressured to move to Mexico with a large group of Mennonites from Saskatchewan who wanted freedom from the restrictions the Government was placing on education.  So they packed up their year-old son, my uncle, left their farmland, and got on a train to Mexico.  It was a disastrous move for them, and before long, they were attempting to return to Canada.  It took them several years, but they finally made it; in the interim, 4 more children were born, one of whom was left in a small grave in Mexico.  Arriving back in the Canadian prairies in the middle of the Great Depression, my grandparents never really recovered financially, and spent a large part of their family’s life moving around western Canada trying to establish themselves.  They finally settled in the lower mainland, and bought a hunk of land which has since been divided into lots and had houses built on it.  There is a street named after my grandparents that runs along that land.  I’m not sure if any of my aunts or uncles finished public school.  My dad left school after grade 9, but eventually received a University degree, the first in his family to do so. 

My mom’s family is about as opposite as can be.  I am often amazed that my parents grew up in the same century.  My mom’s family consisted of three sisters, and they were raised in a middle-class, white collar home in suburban Montreal.   My grandfather worked in an office in downtown Montreal for his entire career, and my grandmother was a traditional suburban housewife.  My mom and her sisters all went to high school and beyond.  On this side of the family, there are 4 of us cousins, with an age difference of about 4 years between the oldest and the youngest.  For a couple of years when we were growing up, my cousins spent parts of the summer with us on our farm in southwestern Manitoba, and I always felt that we interacted more like siblings than like cousins.  My mom and her sisters are very close, and we have remained knit together through their connection, even though we now live on opposite sides of the continent.

In more recent years, I have reconnected in various ways with my father’s side of the family, even though we live a great distance from them.  Several years ago now, we had a mini-family reunion in southwest Saskatchewan, and I “met” some of my cousins for the first time as an adult.  Some  of my cousins have visited us in the Maritimes, and I have visited some of them out west.  I have really treasured these times spent together.  Living in a place like the Maritimes where family roots reach deeper than the beginning of this country, I deeply feel the sense of being disconnected from my roots. 

It’s a strange thing, this concept of family, and the genetics that go with it.  I think we probably spend our lives creating and re-creating “families” wherever we happen to live or work.  We adopt “grandparents” for our kids, we have close friends with whom we share a “sisterly” connection, and our kids' friends become our "other kids."  Sports teams often talk about being “family.”  All of these people are special and significant.  We spend time with them, we nurture those relationships, we tell our stories and share experiences, and we forge lifelong bonds.  I wouldn’t be without my friends and my adopted “family.”  And yet... when I am with my cousins, there is a very real, very familial connection, even though we live a distance apart, and even though I have never had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with them.  It is intangible and deeper than friendship.  Somehow, even though the experiences of our parents and grandparents are stories to us, the lives they lived and experiences they shared, the people they were, create this deep bond among us. 

It is fascinating to see the similarities between us.  Some of them are physical (curly hair for some of us!).  Others are mannerisms, gestures, ways of speaking.  While visiting us a couple of years ago, the husband of one of my cousins commented more than once how obvious it was that we were related because of the mannerisms we shared.  I look at photos of my dad and his siblings when they were young, and see the likenesses between them and my cousins.  I found a portrait of my dad’s family, taken on the occasion of my grandparents’ 50th anniversary, and was immediately struck by the resemblance between one of my uncles at around age 30, and my youngest nephew at the age of 4. 

I treasure my memories of my uncles and aunts:  Carl, who, when we lived in northern BC, shared his family’s summer cottage with us, where I caught my first fish, and saw cougars in the wild (my last memory of him is him standing outside an old outhouse on the site of one of the schools they attended in southern Saskatchewan when they were children, telling a story of how the boys would get into mischief);  Frank, who always had a sparkle in his eye and a joke or a laugh to share, and the last time I was out west, even though he wasn’t in the best of health, drove 2 hours with his wife to have supper with my daughter and me;  Hank, who helped us get settled in a new home, and occasionally let me tag along to different sporting events with him.  And my beautiful aunts, all of whom have given legacies of being women of strong and meaningful faith:  Sue, with her lovely smile and generous and loving heart; gentle Agnes, who cooked me Mennonite food, taught me some Mennonite words, and has always been happy to share my Mennonite heritage with me; Peggy, who is like my second mother and has been here for so many significant events in our lives; and Ann, fun, funny, loving and faithful.

I believe that the experiences and the people that have gone before are all part of who I am.  I am grateful for each of my aunts and uncles.  I am grateful for opportunities to be connected to some of my cousins and their families.  I am grateful for the stories, the laughter, the memories.  Ours is a legacy of gentleness, faith, strength, love and joy.

What have we done to our children?

My daughter phoned me this morning to rant a little bit.  It seems that the university pub decided to offer a Men’s Night on Friday, featuring wings and an NHL hockey game on the big screen.  They created a Facebook event page, and people (including my daughter and a couple of her female friends) began to RSVP; it wasn’t meant to be a “men only” evening, just an evening where the activities and themes were male-oriented.

Inevitably, a young woman posted a comment that this event made her feel uncomfortable, and that she didn’t believe that it was healthy to promote a Men’s themed event in the pub, especially given all the recent publicity about rape culture on campus and the report this week that our campus had the highest number of sexual assaults reported from universities in our province.  Other young women chimed in, and by this morning,  the event apparently had been cancelled.

I should mention that there was a Ladies’ Night held recently at the same pub, with free admission for women, and drink specials.  I don’t believe there was an outcry about that.

This conversation with my daughter made me wonder, not for the first time, “What have we done to our children?” 

I have two kids.  My son is 24 and my daughter is 20.  I remember when our son was born, and as he grew into a toddler and a young child, we deliberately raised him to be a gentle person.  We did not buy into the “boys will be boys” mentality – that is, that boys are naturally and inevitably more destructive and physically harmful than girls are, and that this supposedly innate quality excused poor behaviour.  When he would pat (or hit) our faces, we told him to “be gentle.”  When he tried to take a toy away from another child, he was told to “be gentle.”  When he touched delicate or breakable objects, or read a book, we said “be gentle.”   We did the same with our daughter.

When he was 7 years old, our son became involved with the university football team, and he has been involved with them ever since.  Now he is employed with a professional football team.  Football, as you know, is anything but a gentle atmosphere.  And although I love football, as I’ve previously discussed, I know that in football, and in the male-dominated realm of professional sports, there is a systemic atmosphere of sexism and homophobia, even with the recent numbers of top athletes who have openly expressed their sexuality, and with the increased level of public outcry at the violent off-field antics of some NFL players.

I am not naive, and I know that our football team is not immune from this sexist and homophobic influence, even though there are a large number of very decent young men who have been associated with it over the years.  I have heard the rumours about wild football parties, and young women who make themselves available for *whatever.* I’ve heard how some male students (not just football players) talk about their female counterparts.  Heck, I’ve heard 45-year-old men sitting in the crowds at football games talk about how hot their teenage daughters’ friends are, and exactly what they’d like to do to them if they ever had the chance. 

My son and I have had several conversations over the years about male sports culture and how women are treated within this culture.  I have reminded him that our family’s values require us to see things differently, that women in any context are worthy of respect, just as men are.  I have told him that the way sports culture treats women is unequivocally unacceptable to me, and that I expect and hope it is unequivocally unacceptable to him as well.  Even though he has many very close friends through football, some of his best friends are young women. 

My daughter was raised around the football team.  She was definitely a girly girl when she was little – we used to tell our family when they asked about birthday and Christmas gifts “If it’s bright pink, green or orange, and it has sparkles or feathers, she’ll like it.”  But she learned how to “belch” at the age of 4 from one of the football boys (thanks, Fitzy!), she played front yard baseball and football and soccer, and she grew up not being afraid of the football boys (or any others), and able and willing to stand up for herself and for others. 

At the same time, I have tried to teach her to be wise in her choices.  Even though “No” should mean “No”, I want her to be thoughtful about the situations in which she finds herself.  If she walks into a room where there is a group of young men and she is the only woman, should she stay in that room?  Who are the young men?  Is it a party where everyone has been drinking excessively?  Or is it a study group?  Perhaps if it is a party, and she is the only young woman, it might not be wise to stay.  I want her to be fearless but I want her also to be smart and safe.  

The problem with the scenario above, where Men’s Night is banned from the student pub, is that it does absolutely nothing to minimize “rape culture” on campus.  It does nothing to foster a spirit of community or an atmosphere of trying to solve these problems together. 

I think it is a sad commentary on our society.

We’ve created a society where women feel obliged and entitled to take offense at anything male-related.  Where people with penises are automatically considered potential rapists.  Where an unwelcome or an inadvertent touch from a man is treated with the same severity as a rape.  Where women can say and do anything they feel like doing, because “No means No.”

I think we’ve probably created a society where many young men are confused, frustrated and fearful.  We have basically isolated any expression of “maleness” to team sports, and told them that any other gatherings that are gender-specifically male oriented are unacceptable, while we continue to have our Ladies’ Nights and Montreal Massacre rallies and Vagina Monologues.   I can’t imagine being a young man on a date or at a bar, and wondering whether anything I’ve done could possibly be construed as sexual assault.   We have created a society where it is almost shameful to be a man, and where there are indeed many blurred lines between what is acceptable and what is unacceptable in the relationship between men and women.

And ultimately, we have created a society of double standards.  A society where it’s okay to have Ladies’ Night, but not okay to have Men’s Night.  Where it’s okay for a girl to pat a guy on his cute butt, but if a guy were to pat a girl on her cute butt, it would be called “assault” and carry the same stigma as if he had raped her.  A society where womanhood is to be celebrated and manhood is to be denigrated.  I totally get that in the mix of gender relations and feminism there is a reaction to centuries of paternalism.  In the words of that classic Virginia Slims ad, we have come a long way, baby – but maybe we’ve gone a bit too far.

Several years ago, we had a guest speaker on campus.  Don McPherson was a quarterback in both the CFL and NFL.  He now speaks about gender roles and domestic violence.  I remember him saying that violence against women is not a women’s issue, but a men’s issue.  He talked about how we raise our boys to contain their emotions, to be tough and strong, and how this gender construct fails to teach boys how to appropriately express their honest feelings and emotions.  He told us that his pivotal “Ah-ha!”moment occurred in an airport, when a little boy about 3 years old fell down and hurt himself and was crying.  His mother – his MOTHER! – told the little boy to stop crying and to BE A MAN.

I’d like to ask these young women, who are so opposed to anything man-related, how they will raise their sons.  Are they going to look at them from their very first days of babyhood and see potential rapists?  Are they going to raise them to “Be a man”?  To not cry or admit that they are scared or hurt or unsure?  Or are they going to nurture and celebrate the things that are good and healthy and wonderful about boys and men and being human, and teach them to own and respect their feelings? 

I am by no means downplaying the reality of sexual assault and rape culture.  I know it exists.  I know it exists in our town and in our university.  I have friends who are victims.  Recent high profile incidents in our region, like the Dalhousie dentistry scandal, the Saint Mary’s orientation chant, the Rehtaeh Parsons suicide, and even, I would add, the societal acceptance and celebration of music like Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines”, are proof that these issues are very real and very deeply ingrained in our culture.

We women have great power to change things.  Just ask any of the Famous Five (if you don’t know who they are, you should).  We need to use that power for good, to ensure that everyone is valued and respected and celebrated, and to nurture all that is good in ALL of us, male and female.  Nothing good will come from alienating and victimizing each other.  We need to be willing to work together to create deep and lasting change.

We also need to take care in how we react to completely innocent things.  Like Men’s Night at the pub.