New Webinar! Engaging with Children + Youth Online

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New Webinar! Engaging with Children + Youth Online

The time is now to engage with children and youth online. Join in as we navigate innovative, new ways of connecting meaningfully. This will also be an opportunity to listen to one another, ask questions, network and contribute to this evolving situation. We need your voice!

Registration is mandatory so click “going” on the Facebook event or email Lee-Ann in order to get access to the Zoom link prior to the event.

Friday, May 22nd 10 am -11:30 am on Zoom

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Beer + Bible Study

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Bring a glass of beer (or water or juice or a cup of tea or a glass of wine!) and  your Bible and plunge into a spirited discussion. We’ll take a topical approach to the Bible and focus on how the scriptures apply to our daily lives during and beyond COVID-19.

JOIN HERE
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Neil Mancor makes it easy to stay connected!

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Neil Mancor makes it easy to stay connected during the pandemic!

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"Laughter is an Instant Holiday" Blog by Neil Mancor

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“Laughter is an instant holiday.” Milton Berle.

My mother taught me the importance of maintaining a sense of humour in all circumstances. She found the humour in the things we got up to as kids, even the little disasters. She never laughed at us, but she always laughed with us. Like the time I licked the stamps when I was two and got them stuck on my tongue. We would go shopping at Woodward’s Food Floor after school on Fridays and get malted milks and then go around with brain freeze and laugh. Playing games with her was a lot of fun except she would get over involved and want to win. But she did teach me canasta and cribbage when I was at the right age. I vividly recall the time in Grade 4 when I had to learn baseball, but I was hopeless with a ball and bat. So my father enlisted the whole family and out in the garden we practiced and practiced. I was so terrible even Mrs. Buchanan next door watching from her kitchen window had to yell out some advice. Finally my mother took her turn at the bat. My father threw the ball and she hit it right out of the yard. She ran around the bases which included one flower pot, the cherry tree and the swing set before sliding into home. How she laughed.

She would often find quirky ways of disciplining us when we went astray. For some teenage infraction on the part of my sister, she made her join the junior choir at Church as a penance. I never knew why. But there was my sister sitting in the choir stall behind mine giving me her best teenage glare. I think it was some kind of funny revenge on my mother’s part. That’s how she did things. I grew up in a family and community which valued a slightly off-beat kind of sense of humour and there was always a great deal of laughter all around. Even in my mother’s later years after suffering a stroke, whilst she lost her ability to speak, she did not lose her ability to laugh. She often found humour in things that went on in the residence she lived in her final years. She thought the Hawaiian themed evenings were hilarious.

I hope I have passed that onto my kids and raised them in the same tradition. A good sense of humour can help one out of many a sticky situation, and can bring a sense of perspective to life. I think parenting with a sense of humour is a great way to enjoy all the different phases of your kids’ lives. There is as much humour in playing with a one-year old as there is in a bunch of zonked out teenagers sprawled around your living room. A few years ago there were a bunch of teenagers sprawled around my living room waiting for me to make pizza. I had nipped outside for something and slid off a step and sprained my ankle (don’t get me started on ankles). I then dropped the pizza in the hot oven which caught on fire and had to be hastily put out with the fire extinguisher all the while I was limping around in agony. “Hey Mr. Mancor,” they said, “do you think you could hurry up with the pizza, we’ve got a party to go to.” I thought that was the funniest thing and later sat down and had a belly laugh. Over a large glass of wine, mind you.

For all the challenges of the time in which we find ourselves, I hope we can still find time to laugh with one other. Whether it’s because we all seem to spend our time in a version of the Brady Bunch opening credits, or the latest in fashion masks, we can encourage one other and lift our spirits by finding joy and humour in the very real humanness of our lives, even in lockdown. Not laughing at each other lets laugh with each other when we can. For a good laugh is powerful way to connect with others. John Cleese said

“Laughter connects you to people. It’s almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance…when you are howling with laughter.”

So here’s my last story. Two weeks ago I was in the operating room at the Lakeshore and the team was prepping me for the epidural and sedation. They rolled me over on my side to get ready to put the epidural in and as they were doing that the anesthesiologist and the nurse anesthesiologist noticed that I had a couple of tattoos on my side over my ribs and started commenting on them. “Hey, cool tattoos” one of them said, “what do they mean?” I told them, lying there rolled over having an epidural put in. Somehow having a conversation like that at that moment seemed so absurd to me that it gave me the biggest laugh. Until suddenly everything went wonderfully relaxed….

Anglican Bishop's Sign Public Letter on Guaranteed Basic Income

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May 3, 2020

Dear Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister Morneau:

Subject: COVID-19 Pandemic – Guaranteed Basic Income

We write from across our country – from the tundra of the high Arctic, the out-ports of the Atlantic coast, from French and English speaking Canada, from urban to rural, the Prairies, the Rockies and coastal mountains and from the Pacific coast; we write as Indigenous people and as non-Indigenous. We write from across denominational traditions. As bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada and the Anglican Church of Canada we write, compelled by our shared faith convictions and moral obligation to care for the human condition of all.

Although we represent great diversity, we write to you because we are united, and morally bound in a singular message: Canada needs Guaranteed Basic Income for all. We need it today.

We applaud the government for the various pandemic-related programs it has launched, including CERB. These programs address vital needs. As you have seen in practice, each of these programs is based on specific inclusion and exclusion criteria, with the result that there are different entitlements for individuals in varying circumstances. Way-finding through this can be daunting and some are excluded from all programs. We aspire to share this goal: that no one should fall through the gaps, and that everyone should have straightforward access to equitable support.

There is a way to that goal: an alternative, affordable, just, evidence-based policy option called Guaranteed Basic Income. As Pope Francis wrote last week: “This may be the time to consider a universal basic wage”. We would extend and amplify the Pontiff’s remarks: “This IS the time.”

Canada has long-considered GBI as a possible way to address inequities – from Mincome in Manitoba, to recent efforts in Ontario. The Parliamentary Budget office has studied it. National and international evidence shows that it is affordable; the Canadian studies suggest it would cost no more than perhaps 1% of GDP.[1] Many scholars are confident that there would be beneficial returns in every aspect of our polity, from justice to health, from education to social welfare.

We recommend GBI, not just as an astute financial policy, but also because it marks our identity as a country who cares for one another; it is a policy that enshrines this value in law. GBI would be a new social contract, defining a new relationship amongst Canadians, through the mediating role of our government: we would be articulating a relationship where we would know, with enduring certainty, that some of our public spending would provide income for others. With GBI we state clearly and definitively that no one will be failed by the system so catastrophically that they cannot feed and house themselves and their families; that no one is left so alone and so far behind that they cannot find a path out of precarity.

We encourage you to see the enormous economic and social value that Guaranteed Basic Income provides: from savings in our health care and correctional systems, to a strengthened opportunity for individuals to access child care, transportation, food, refugee and immigration aid, housing, and particularly the self-determination and health for Indigenous people.

GBI represents a positive nation-building policy option for today and for tomorrow. It can become the great, transformational legacy, left by this government, which arises from this pandemic, paralleling the great social gains which arose during and after earlier conflicts: public health insurance and equal rights. Guaranteed Basic Income is the policy which we can bequeath to our children, to their children, to the future.

We strongly urge the government to immediately implement Guaranteed Basic Income for all people who live on this land – for our citizens, our refugees, even for the visitors who find themselves here during this pandemic, unable to work and unable to thrive.

We say again, from diverse places, with diverse voices and diverse convictions: Canada needs GBI for all. Now is the time to put it in place. Today, we say in unison: “Canada needs Guaranteed Basic Income for all. We need it today.”

Yours sincerely,

The Rt Reverend Geoffrey Woodcroft – Diocese of Rupert’s Land
The Rt Reverend Jane Alexander – Diocese of Edmonton
The Most Reverend Linda Nicholls – Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada
Reverend Susan C. Johnson – National Bishop, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada
Reverend Jason Zinko – Manitoba/Northwestern Ontario Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada
The Most Reverend Anne Germond – Dioceses of Algoma and Moosonee
The Most Reverend Fred Hiltz – Diocese of Moosonee
The Rt Reverend Geoff Peddle – Diocese of Eastern Newfoundland and Labrador
The Rt Reverend John Watton – Diocese of Central Newfoundland
The Rt Reverend John Organ – Diocese of Western Newfoundland
The Rt Reverend Bruce Myers – Diocese of Quebec
The Rt Reverend Mary Irwin-Gibson – Diocese of Montreal
The Rt Reverend Michael Oulton – Diocese of Ontario
The Rt Reverend Andrew Asbil – Diocese of Toronto
The Rt Reverend Peter Fenty (suffragan) – Diocese of Toronto
The Rt Reverend Riscylla Shaw (suffragan) – Diocese of Toronto
The Rt Reverend Jenny Andison (suffragan) – Diocese of Toronto
The Rt Reverend Kevin Robertson (suffragan) – Diocese of Toronto
The Rt Reverend Philip Poole (retired) – Diocese of Toronto
The Rt Reverend Nigel Shaw – Bishop Ordinary to the Canadian Forces
The Rt Reverend Don Phillips (retired) – Rupert’s Land
The Most Reverend Mark MacDonald – National Indigenous Archbishop
The Rt Reverend Susan Bell – Diocese of Niagara
Bishop-Elect Shane Parker – Diocese of Ottawa
The Most Reverend Ron Cutler – Diocese of Nova Scotia / Prince Edward Island
The Rt Reverend David Edwards – Diocese of Fredericton
The Rt Reverend Todd Townshend – Diocese of Huron
The Rt Reverend David Parsons – Diocese of the Arctic
The Rt Reverend Joey Royal (suffragan) – Diocese of the Arctic
The Rt Reverend William Cliff – Diocese of Brandon
The Rt Reverend Lydia Mamakwa – Indigenous Spiritual Ministry of Mishamikoweesh
The Rt Reverend Isaiah Beardy (suffragan) – Indigenous Spiritual Ministry of Mishamikoweesh
The Rt Reverend Chris Harper – Diocese of Saskatoon
The Rt Reverend Robert Hardwick – Diocese of Qu’Appelle
The Rt Reverend Michael Hawkins – Diocese of Saskatchewan
The Rt Reverend Adam Halkett – Diocese of Saskatchewan Indigenous Bishop
The Most Reverend Greg Kerr-Wilson – Diocese of Calgary
The Rt Reverend Lesley Wheeler-Dame – Diocese of Yukon
The Rt Reverend David Lehmann – Diocese of Caledonia
Bishop-Elect Lincoln McKoen – Territory of the People
The Rt Reverend Logan McMenamie – Diocese of British Columbia
The Most Reverend Melissa Skelton – Diocese of New Westminster
The Rt Reverend Lynne McNaughton – Diocese of Kootenay
The Rt Reverend George Bruce (retired) – Diocese of Ontario

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https://www.anglican.ca/news/a-public-letter-on-guaranteed-basic-income/30026458/