I've been in Canada for the past couple of weeks and I visited my first Canadian Meeting in Montreal. It was in a community centre in a lovely area of town. They set up the chairs for a certain number of people. Every couple of minutes of so, the door would creak open and someone else would tiptoe in. This went on the whole Meeting until they ended up with twice the number of people they usually have. It was wonderful to be somewhere different that felt so very familiar on so many different levels as well. As I understand it, this year there may be a first Canadian "Faith and Practice" ratified at their Yearly Meeting in August.
In the Notices, one of the women mentioned a protest some were going to in Ottawa in conjunction with the Raging Grannies. Now this is something I'd sort of forgotten about but is a wonderful Canadian way women have found to protest very effectively about 25 years ago, almost the exact same time the Quaker Women's Group here in England were giving their Swarthmore Lecture. Anyway, the Raging Grannies seem to have fun during their protests while mocking stereotypes about older women and getting a fair amount of media attention as well.
Here's an article on the Raging Grannies:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/joepublic/2010/jan/13/raging-grannies-older-people-activism
Rock on Raging Grannies. I think they're the bees knees.
Self Power & Other Power
5 weeks ago
2 comments:
Nadine: Any chance of seeing you at Canadian Yearly Meeting later this summer?
Not this summer, but next year in Halifax am thinking may be possible. Will you be there?
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