Luis sits at a table in the parish hall of St. Alban’s Anglican Church after a Sunday afternoon service, eating a hard shell chicken taco. Between bites he answers questions from the Anglican Journal about his two-and-a-half decades of experience as a temporary foreign worker in Canada.
It all started with a series of sermons.
The ecclesiastical province of Rupert’s Land elected the Rt. Rev. Gregory Kerr-Wilson, 53, bishop of the diocese of Calgary, its new metropolitan on June 18, the first day of its synod at Manitou Springs, Watrous, Sask.
The Rt. Rev. Terrance A. Dance, suffragan bishop of the diocese of Huron announced last week that he will be retiring as of December 31, 2015.
Cries of “care not cuts!” echoed down Hamilton’s King St. West as a group of protestors marched around Jackson Square as part of the National Day of Action to protest cuts made to refugee health care in 2012.
When the Pan American and Parapan American Games come to Toronto this summer, there is concern among some faith groups and NGOs that they will bring with them more than athletes and spectators.
In the basement of St. George’s Anglican Church in Kamloops, B.C., Theresa Walker, a parishioner at St. Paul’s Cathedral, is studying math. As she looks over the exercise sheet in front of her, she explains that she’s working toward her high school diploma.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) has been investigating the tragic legacy of Canada’s Indian residential schools for the past six years, and last Wednesday, June 3, it held its closing ceremonies at Rideau Hall in Ottawa, but two prominent Indigenous Anglicans who had come to Ottawa for the final events were not present.
Acknowledging that their apologies for harms done at Indian residential schools “are not enough,” Anglican, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic and United church leaders on June 2 welcomed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) recommendations that they say will offer direction to their “continuing commitment to reconciliation” with Indigenous peoples.
A journey of six years reached its climax on June 2 when the summary of the final report of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was presented to a crowded audience in the Grand Ballroom of Ottawa’s Delta hotel.
“My mom and dad didn’t tell us why they were putting us on the train. I thought they were coming with us,” said Clara Fergus, a Cree woman from northern Manitoba to a sharing circle on the morning of June 1, at the beginning of the final event of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples provides “a crucial framework for achieving reconciliation, justice and healing in Canada for all indigenous peoples,” according to Paul Joffe, a lawyer who represents the Grand Council of the Crees in international forums and who has done a lot of work on aboriginal law.
An estimated 10,000 people joined the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Walk for Reconciliation. Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, led the Anglican delegation, which included representatives from various dioceses across Canada. Photos: André Forget/ Anglican Journal
Drums thunder in the Rue Laurier underpass, and voices echo in song and conversation. Banners, placards, signs and flags catch the wind coming in off the Ottawa River, and below them thousands of marchers approach Portage bridge, which links Gatineau with Ottawa.
Soft morning light streams into the second-floor windows of the Blue Sage Bed and Breakfast in Ashcroft, B.C.
Sitting around a table laden with fruit, biscuits, jam and fresh coffee, Karyn Bryson, Lois Hill, Sylvia Strathearn, David Durksen and Martina Duncan discuss the collaborative approach to ministry they have been pioneering over the past few years at St. Alban’s Anglican Church, a stone’s throw to the south.
A bad smell hangs over parts of British Columbia’s Nicola Valley.
Although June will see the final event of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Ottawa, and the release of the commission’s final report, the work of reconciliation is only just beginning for the Anglican Church of the Redeemer in downtown Toronto.
On May 16, George Sumner, principal and Helliwell Professor of World Mission at Wycliffe College in Toronto was elected as the next bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Dallas in Texas.
“I’m one of the older lay ministers – I’ve been doing it since before they even called us lay ministers,” O’Della Grundy chuckles, while going over an order of service she will use for a memorial later in the day. “When I talk about [my] ministry to seniors, my daughter always says, ‘Mom, you are one!'”
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