On My Way to Work

Exercise has never been ‘my thing.’ Well, there were those few years in college and university where I did the Canadian Forces 5BX program for 30-40 every night before showering and hitting the sack. I always slept well, but now they tell us we need to gradually reduce our activity before bed so we are bodily ready to sleep. Maybe that is the advice necessary for those who can’t sleep due to anxiety and being tense from stress, but my routine worked for me. At least 3 times in my life I tried jogging – it never lasted more than 6 weeks. Not sure why I quit the first time; that was when I was a Family Practice Resident and my new wife and I jogged along the banks and dikes of the Red River in St. Boniface (Winnipeg). The second time, in the mid ‘80’s, I used to go to the nearby WC Morton Collegiate (high school) when we lived in Gladstone MB where I had my first practice and jogged around the track. That stopped when my wife’s aunt and uncle came for an extended visit. The third and last time was perhaps somewhere in the 90’s, when I went to nearby J. R. Reid Elementary School and did laps in the schoolyard. That came to an end with a snowfall and my getting wet feet getting a cold.

So, I walk. I like to cycle too but I must admit that as of the date of writing my bike has been sitting unridden in our carpark for a year or more. I have certainly done my share of biking to school and work over the yrs though. The longest was a 6-mile one-way trip to Winnipeg’s the Grace Salvation Army Hospital when I was doing a psychiatry rotation there as a 4^th yr. medical student.

Thus it was that when we made a pre-retirement move to Richmond (BC) in 2005, one of the stipulations we made of the local relatives and real estate agent when searching out a new home was that it needed to be within walking distance of my workplace. Actually, I currently have two workplaces and our condominium is within walking distance of both. I could cycle but I never have. By the time I get suited and geared up for that I could be ¼ way to my ‘office’ by walking. Depending on the pace and traffic, my walk to work is between 15 and 25 minutes.

After saying goodbye to my wife Anne and walking down the to the opposite end of our (4^th) floor and taking the stairs down – not the elevator - I walk out past our building’s front gardens on either side of the bricked entrance to the street. Anne and I just planted some of our own perennials there to share with our neighbours. Then I cross the street and walk west on our street past apartments and townhouses, invariably ducking under overgrown cedars – why don’t people trim their trees that abut the sidewalk for us tall guys (I’m 6’2”). In spring there are a couple of cherry blossom trees here to enjoy. For awhile, when my son had gotten an iPhone and did not need his iPod, I tried listening to music while I walked to work. Between the earbuds dropping out of my ears and not being able to hear the birds and other outdoor noises, I gave up on the iPod. 

Halfway down the block is a church. When we first moved here we asked another occupant of our building where the nearest mailbox was – yes, we are of a generation old enough that we sometimes still post letters. He told us it was on the next road north and that there was a shortcut across this church’s parking lot. It then goes between two arms of a collection of daycares/pre-schools, across another parking lot and to the next road. I often muse that if the workers of these daycares ever questioned my walking there, whether my answer that I was a child psychiatrist who cares for children so their charges are safe, no need to fear, would hold water. But there are many who cross here.

There, at Granville Road now, backing on to a small plot where daffodils and other shrubs bloom in spring and daylilies later, is the mailbox, next to a row of newspaper boxes where I frequently pick up the day’s Metro and/or 24 hours. If I’m not going to work, I may turn right or (east) and cross to the north to go up Buswell Rd. on various errands or shop. That’s also the way to Dairy Queen if I’m just out for a walk. To go west to work I walk in front of several office buildings, including one where a number of my fellow Vancouver Coastal Health workers are employed, which I refer to as ‘the gold building’ for its colour, and a condo tower built after we moved here and a lot where a Shell service station used to be. If I don’t take the aforementioned shortcut but walk to the end of our block and north on No. 3 Rd., I pass the first Macdonalds in the country, built in 1967 – no longer the original building of course.  A few years ago a disgruntled ex stabbed his former wife and her lover to death there, right in front of the counter. Don’t take this the wrong way; our neighbourhood is normally not like that at all. Across the street here is Brighouse Park where the floodlights are sometimes on when I come home because of a ball game of one kind or another. During the 2010 Olympics there were huge water filled Olympics rings on the grass at this park, with Richmond’s famous cranberries floating on tip. There was also a free Ferris wheel ride to get a better view of the rings from the air. The ponds around the City Hall were full of cranberries floating on top too.

After crossing Granville Road to the north I generally walk past our Richmond City Hall, an architecturally award-winning tower built in the ‘90’s. At night, and especially around Christmas, the trees around the city hall, including along the park across the street to the south, are lit up with colorful LED lights. These are permanent in the trees along No. 3 Rd., Richmond’s main street; that goes north past City Hall and Richmond’s largest mall, Richmond Centre. I cut across a parking lot on the north side of City Hall through a break in a hedge and I am now in the parking lot of the mall. Here, as frequently elsewhere on my journey, I often encounter squirrels and rabbits. Gulls, ducks, usually Mallards, crows and Canada Geese frequent the City Hall grounds with its trees and ponds. I have even seen Canada Geese perched on the mall carpark wall and Sears roof!

If it is raining I will walk though the mall – doors open at 8 to accommodate the hordes of walkers, tai chi practitioners and exercise groups that make it their home in the morning before the shops open. I can take my pick of several routes within the mall, but none cross the food court anymore; they moved that upstairs and expanded it a year or so ago after closing down the last remaining downtown movie theatres there. Can you believe I have not been upstairs to the food court yet? Anne always says I am easily tempted by junk food and treats. Well, I have walked past Papa Beards (mmm cream puffs and eclairs – never been there, although I have had their wares from elsewhere), Purdy’s Chocolates, Macdonalds and all those vendors in the food court, which used to include Dairy Queen before the move, with hardly ever making a stop. Indeed, we had been in Richmond eight months before we realized there was a Tim Horton’s on the east side of the mall! A friend came to visit and asked Anne to meet her there…

If it’s not raining I prefer the fresh(er – no air is fresh when your walking amongst cars and buses in the city) air outside and walk around Sears and OK tire and up past Sportcheck, Cobb’s Bakery – occasionally stopping in there to redeem a coupon or buy something to boost morale at work -  and Kin’s Farm Market, sometimes picking up produce there on the way home as I reverse my tracks; these all open to the west side of the mall. Then I cut straight north across the parking lot until I meet up with Minoru Boulevard and continue north past a few condo towers and more parking lot until a crosswalk. For safety’s sake I have attached reflective straps to my backpack – yes, I carry a backpack full of ‘homework’ and my agenda that usually weighs at lest 10 lbs altogether including my lunch. More training - because there have been too many pedestrians killed in crosswalks in our city and of course for too many months of the year I am going to and from work in the dark and rain when visibility’s very bad for motorists to be able to see pedestrians. Just to the south of the crosswalk in the median are two lovely old cherry trees that bloom most beautifully in spring. The City of Richmond parks workers keep the flowerbeds around the tress fresh with new flowers all year round too. They do the same for other sites I pass, particularly in front of City Hall and Brighouse Park. Sometimes they are quite creative with the ‘sculptures’ they include.

Currently, the one and two storey low rental homes that have stood across the street from the mall here for years have been demolished to make way for another 5 high-rises, two of which (some 300 units) are still to be for low rental. Behind them are three identical high-rises built in 1968, the first in Richmond. Their brick walls and full-length balconies are quite different than the glass and steel of today.  Then it is past Minoru Residence, Richmond’s tertiary long-term care facility. In spring the apple blossoms filling the east courtyard of the residence bloom wonderfully as they hang over the hedge as I walk north along Minoru Blvd. If the clouds aren’t covering them, here and from on Number 3 Rd I have a nice view of the North Shore Mountains, all the way from the Lions Ears to Grouse Mountain. They are at their most beautiful after a fresh snowfall in winter. At night one can see the ski run lights sparkling in the distance. Once I watched a pair of Bald Eagles fly over the park behind the hoses and residence and go north to light on the top of the Marriott Hotel, which is one of a row of hotels on Westminster Highway at this point.  Then I turn down an alley before getting to Westminster Highway, Richmond’s other main road, and head west past the back of the long-term care facility to our office building adjacent to Minoru Park. There are a number of maple trees around the parking lots here that are a wonderful red in the fall. I cut across the parking lot of our building, past a dumpster sometimes frequented by raccoons, and go around the west side, past a couple of dogwoods and hydrangea bushes – more nice blooms at the appropriate times of the year – to the entrance of our building and  - voila – I’m at work. The entrance of our building faces Minoru Park, a fine inner city garden in a Japanese style. Punch the appropriate numbers on the keypad to let myself in, disarm the place if I’m first there in the morning, which is often the case, and I’m on my way upstairs to unlock the doors there, turn on the lights, unlock the file cabinets and get my files. We go through all this because just before I moved here a disgruntled ex-patient (Israeli ex-soldier) stabbed his counselor to death in the parking lot outside the Adult Mental Health Centre so safety precautions have been upgraded.

This has been my route three, and more recently two days a week, for the past 7.5 years; I cut down to a pre-retirement 4-day week in the fall of 2011. On the other two days a week my walk to work is to the southwest instead of northwest.

I go to the end of our block and instead of turning north towards Macdonalds I turn south. Sometimes I walk all the way down Number 3 Rd. to Blundell directly. Other times I go down a block and cross to take a shortcut to Minoru via Acheson. This is all residential area except for a couple of service stations and a Seven-Eleven as well as a convenience store flower/garden shop at the corner of Number Three Road and Blundell.

Then it is west along Blundell, crossing Moffatt where crowds of grandparents, parents and kids are sometimes going to school via the crossing there. There may be some high school students meeting me to go to the high school that is east of here; the Asian (as they call those of Chinese origins here) boys with their unisex hairstyles and the girls with their impossibly skinny legs (now there's an expression I've wanted to place somewhere for along time...). A couple of blocks past Gilbert Road and I am at Blundell Elementary School. Again, in spring the parking lot and the park at the back of the school have cherry trees, which look so nice when in full bloom. I cross the parking lot and walk around either side of the school to the double portable at back (south) that houses our office. I walk up a railed asphalt covered ramp and I’ve arrived. Sometimes I don’t walk all the way to the school. I cut across the Richmond Baptist Church parking lot and the playground at its southwest corner to pass through a gate in the schoolyard fence and then walk along the school to come around to our portable from the east. Again, if I’m the first, I have to turn to the school first to disarm the portable before gong back to unlock the door, enter and turn on the lights. After the shooting at New Town Connecticut this winter, our school doors are locked all day now and there are newly installed metal ‘blinds’ pulled down over the windows at night. Fortress America, here we come!

So, sometimes I take my car to work, especially if it’s pouring rain or I am going to other places during the day, e.g. schools for meetings or observations. However, I try to walk at least 50% of the time – both ways. Sometimes when I go to Blundell my wife gives me a ride and continues on to shop at the Safeway at the end of the block; there is a large collection of shops at Blundell Centre there, including restaurants staff and I have sometimes attended – or Macdonalds where I’ve sometimes gone for a Flurry or ice cream treat on a warm summer day. Hey, it’s another walk!

Someday I may video representative sections of my walk(s) to work…

Thoughts on Suicide

The recent loss to suicide of the child of a friend has prompted me, particularly as a psychiatrist who works with children and adolescents and their families, to write this piece.

Parents' loss of children is always upsetting. It is unnatural, against the order of things. Parents are supposed to die first. If that loss is due to suicide, the effect is magnified.

Some of the natural responses to such an event are questions such as, what causes suicide and how can we prevent it.

Although some debate this, particularly in the circumstances of terminal illness and late life, most suicide occurs in the context of depression. This risk can be increased if there are other issues present such as substance and alcohol abuse and psychosis. As such, with rates of depression increasing among young people, we can expect the numbers of suicide to increase unless we do more about the background.

One of the myths that still persists is that talking about suicide might bring up the idea and increase the risk of its occurring. This is entirely false. It probably stems from our own discomfort and denial with discussing such a threatening subject. We don't want this to happen so we don't talk about it. We need to talk about it, just as we need to talk about mental illness in general, to decrease these fear-based taboos and stigmas. Inquiring about and counseling against suicide is a regular part of my practice. One thing that I stress with my patients and their parents is that suicide is a symptom of depression. It is the false ideas of the value of life created by depression in one's diseased mind. It is not an impulse to be yielded to. If anything, it tells us that we need to work harder to overcome the depression.

There are many strategies to try and prevent suicide, not the least of which is, of course, to try and prevent and adequately treat depression, psychosis and substance and alcohol abuse. Supporting those who work to promote wellness and combat mental illness in your community is part of this. This could even include contacting your political representatives and government to promote more support for this area. We need more work in this area than we need more jails. There are agencies with websites and suicide prevention numbers to call that every person with depression and their family should always have available. We need to open up the channels of communication about those who suffer with that and their families and caregivers so that they can receive the support they need until they recover to the point that suicidal thinking is no longer an issue. And that, of course, is the other point to stress again, that once the sufferer’s depression begins to resolve, the suicidal thinking will disappear.

Having said that, we need to realize that, as concerning is the prospect of that is, that we will no more be able to prevent every suicide than we can prevent every other type of mishap that we fear. Suicides even happen in mental health wards where people are admitted for closer observation and more intensive treatment.

As Christians, I think most of us are moving beyond the idea where we think of suicide as always a sin. Indeed, it was once considered legally a crime. We know of Christians who have committed suicide. My belief is that in the throes of depression, the person is really not in their right mind when it comes to making a decision about this, and for that I think it helps us to hold on to the belief that our all-merciful and forgiving heavenly Father does not hold that against them.

Of course, when a suicide has occurred, we need to be there to support the family and friends of the lost loved one. They need our presence, our prayers and reassurances for the struggles and questions that such an event raises for all of us.

- NOTE: the above minus about 250 words to meet their editorial limit was published in the April 15, 2013 issue of The Canadian Mennonite.

My Role In Empowering Our Community For Truth And Reconciliation

Empowering our Community for Truth and Reconciliation:

 “What did you do that helped the constituency grow in awareness of the TRC, grasp its importance

and engage it?”

Mennonite Church Canada (MC-Canada), formally known as the General Conference Mennonite Church in Canada, has had a relationship with First Nations People going back to the 1940s if not earlier. This relationship has grown to a connection that spans at least all the western provinces in Canada. As such, it was probably almost a natural that MC-Canada should become involved with the Indian Residential School Survivors Society and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This denomination has long had a ministry working with First Nations, first known as Mennonite Pioneer Mission, then Native Ministries and now, in keeping with a more appropriate recognition of what that relationship should look like, I working together of equals, it has become the National Ministry: Indigenous Relations.

I have become involved with this thrust and so am being kept in the communications link about what is going on presently. As such, I received an article from MC-Canada Indigenous Relations Coordinator Steve Heinrichs about HOW the Saskatchewan Mennonite TRC Group engaged their constituency, and what – in hindsight – they could have done.  The document was entitled “Empowering our Community for Truth and Reconciliation: Learnings from the MC-Sask & MCC-Sask TRC Prep Group.”  It asked the question: “What did you do that helped the constituency grow in awareness of the TRC, grasp its importance and engage it?”

I have considered myself a part of the movement within Mennonite Church BC, a provincial arm of MC-Canada, of working towards reconciliation with the First Nations in our communities. This led me to begin to look at what I have done and am doing. The following document was the first step that has been recorded of that process.

1. In the first place, I grew up in a home among First Nations people, to a father who had already worked in this community for three years, teaching school and then serving as a United Church minister. My mother had joined him a year before my birth.

The first year of my life, 1946-47, was spent partly at Oxford House, a community in North-eastern Manitoba, followed by several months at the home of Stanley Collie in Buffalo Narrows, Saskatchewan, where my parents were relieved this couple as they went out to do deputation work for the Northern Canada Evangelical Mission which they were working for.

Then we spent nine years in Grand Rapids, Manitoba, a Historic community at the mouth of the Saskatchewan River, where it runs into Lake Winnipeg. This was a Métis community on one side of the river and a Cree reserve on the other side. My parents were working for the Northern Canada Evangelical Mission and we built a new home and a worship space we called the Gospel Tabernacle.

In 1957 We Moved To Loon Straits, Manitoba, a largely Métis Community on the east side of the south basin of Lake Winnipeg, where my father became the local pastor in the chapel they had there.

So, all of my schooling and all of my playmates were either Metis or First Nations Children. To my parents' credit, I grew up with accepting all of these people as equals and, indeed, in many ways superior to us, because of their knowledge of the land, their adaptation to it and their ways of living in it. I never heard my parents say anything discriminatory or negative against them.

2. With that background, we moved to Winnipeg in 1962. It was around that time that Winnipeg was beginning to become something of a Mecca for first Nations young people looking for work and to further their education. My father opened up a mission there to provide tutoring, help with finding employment and simply a drop-in center to facilitate relationships between the Mennonite church in Winnipeg and first Nations people. Youth Opportunities Unlimited, as it was called, located on Notre Dame Ave., ran from 1963 until after my parents moved to Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan, in 1967. During the time in Winnipeg and before, I remember accompanying my father to Indian-Metis conferences. He also made connections with prisoners at Stony Mountain Penitentiary and I remember our family accompanying him for a powwow on the grounds one Sunday afternoon.

3. When I moved to Saskatchewan in 1968, to Saskatoon, my connections to first Nations peoples dwindled. It was not until I moved back to Winnipeg to study medicine in 1972, that I began to re-establish my connections with First Nations people. After first year medicine, and again after second year, those being the only two years where we has medical students had the summer off, the University of Manitoba's Faculty of Medicine's Northern Medical Unit offered employment in northern nursing stations for those who wished. This was to help facilitate physicians going to rural areas on graduation and also to help provide better healthcare for these people, mainly of First Nations Origin.

The first summer, 1973, it was my great joy to return to Grand Rapids, my childhood home, to spend the summer working in the Nursing Station there. Naturally, I reconnected with a number of people from my past. My parents came to visit and showed slides from the time that we had lived in the area for the community in the local band hall.

The second summer, 1974, I went to work at South Indian Lake, accessible in the summer only by boat or aircraft. I spent such an enjoyable time there that when I heard about a vacancy over the Christmas/New Year's season, I volunteered to go and work there for another 10 days. I even had to find my own nurse to work under, which I was able to do, using a friend from my church. I again had a very good time. It was here that I met a number of individuals whose situation stimulated me to write folk songs about them, which I was to perform years later (see below). When I left the community, I ended up leaving the guitar that I used to compose and perform the songs with in the hands of our housekeeper, Betsy Linklater, who wanted it. The deal was that she make me a beaded best in the Woodland Cree tradition, which she did, and which I have continued to wear at events through the years.

4. Then, when I got into the Family Practice Residency in 1976, one of the outreach programs the Family Practice Unit of St. Boniface General Hospital ran was where we as residents would fly up to first Nations and Métis communities in eastern Manitoba every six weeks to deliver health care. I was able to secure Bloodvein River, just 30 miles north of my former home in Loon Straits, and which I had once visited with my father, Little Grand Rapids and Puaingassi as my outposts and thoroughly enjoyed going there for the second year of the program. This was in part in because I could renew and also build on some previous connections, as these communities had been mission sites of Mennonite Pioneer Mission, the agency under which my parents had worked at Loon Straits and then in Winnipeg.

5. Then, when I moved to Gladstone, Manitoba, a small rural community in north-central Manitoba, I began to make weekly visits to the Sandy Bay Reserve, a Saulteaux/Ojibway or Anishinabe community. Many of these people also made their way to our clinic and especially hospital in Gladstone as well. We were even invited to take part in some of their social events. On one occasion we were en route to a powwow when we went into the ditch, so we never made it.

6. When we moved to Brandon in 1985, I worked as a Family Physician for 4 1/2 years. I had some First Nations patients. One young woman who was afflicted with schizophrenia, and whom I had looked after in the hospital and then helped her through her prenatal period, remarked to me on one visit, "You really like Indians don't you?" I received that as a wonderful compliment. Brandon had also been the site of the large residential schools to the northwest of the community. The buildings were still standing.

7. When I completed my psychiatry residency in 1994, I began a new chapter of connecting to the first Nations in south-western Manitoba. I began to make regular consultation trips to communities, which served large First Nations populations, who took advantage of this service. These included communities such as Swan River, Dauphin (the site of a residential school), Russell, Birtle (another past residential school site), Shoal River, Rivers, Minnedosa, Neepawa, Wawanesa, Souris, Virden and Killarney.

8. It was during these years that I became aware of the residential school issue, although I had known about it at some level all my life. At the same time, I was seeing a lot of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. I then realized that many of the non-First Nations Peoples' unfortunate, discriminatory and derogatory stereotypes of Indians were of those who ran into trouble with alcohol and were probably even suffering from FASD. The characteristics that came to be so closely identified with First Nations individuals who lived in the cities and towns are too similar to the features of FASD. I always maintained that the people who held to these negative views really did not know First Nations people, particularly those who lived in their own communities and were leading successful lives and therefore not attracting the negative attention that led to the perpetuation of these stereotypes.

9. Then, in 2005, we felt the timing was right to move west and felt led to Richmond, BC. There were pros and cons to the move. In some ways, the cons became more evident even after we arrived, although they were not major. For me, professionally, I felt somewhat saddened that all of my experience and good relationships with First Nations people was basically not being drawn on here, at least not initially and professionally. There are references to first Nations in Richmond but the oft-quoted 2500 of them that are seemingly here must be mostly invisible, although I'm not sure if that means well integrated. I did run into the occasional patient from time to time, but sometimes I did not even realize I was seeing a First Nations person.

10. In, I believe it was 2006, I had volunteered/accepted the nomination as Deacon of The Missions and Service Committee of Peace Mennonite Church and was duly acclaimed for that role which I kept until June 2012. Part of my reason for continuing in this as time went on was to advance the agenda of the relationship with First Nations people.

11. Richard Twiss, a Lakota Sioux from the prairies who now lives in Oregon and runs Wiconi International was brought to our church for an evening session by Daryll Klassen of the Neighbours Program at MCC BC. A Presbyterian Cree elder by the name of Mary Fontaine was also present that evening. I believe we met.

12. There were various things going on though in the nation and province, as well as our own area, that kept me in touch with and interested in what was going on with the First Nations. There was still enough in my heart for me to go to Winnipeg in June 2010 and take a one-week course at the Canadian Mennonite University School of Peace Building on treaties and justice with respect to the First Nations. It was a wonderful week spent with eight other students under the mentorship of Cree Elder and former United Church of Canada Moderator Stan McKay. When I returned from that course I resolved to put my experience to good use in terms of what could be done in our community to improve the situation between first Nations and the rest of us. One of my thoughts was that, having gotten to know many immigrants, they really have little idea of the place of First Nations peoples in this country. Unfortunately, too many of them have too quickly swallowed the stereotype I discussed in .8. A fantasy I entertained was of First Nations Welcoming Teams meeting new immigrants and arrivals at Vancouver International Airport with entertainment and information about this land and the place of First Nations peoples in it. I still think this would be a wonderful thing to see come to fruition. After all, there is already a loss of First Nations artwork and display their. It just needs to be accompanied by present-day information and reality.

13. Mennonite Church BC decided to hire an Indigenous Relations Coordinator to help oversee the relations between the First Nations and our conference and congregations. The first incumbent, Steve Heinrichs, had gained his experience with First Nations people while pastoring at Burns Lake BC. I met him when he came to speak at our church and joined a network of individuals that he was forming to promote this cause.

14. Mary Fontaine, introduced in .11, is the Executive Director of Hummingbird Ministries. We began to make connections. This was underscored when I found that one of my friends in the congregation, Tim Corlis, a musician, had been involved with their sharing circles for the past year. He and his wife Sarah Fretz had even performed at their second annual Peace through the Arts Festival at South Delta Baptist Church in the fall of 2011.

15. Steve was snatched up, within months of his having taken up the position referred to in .13, by Native Ministries of Mennonite Church Canada and moved to Winnipeg. A gentleman who identified himself as a Cree, Brander McDonald, replaced him. We had Brander come to our church to speak to us and give us further input about First Nations and their ways and worldviews in our Adult Education Hour. I had discovered that we had connections going back to Grand Rapids. When Brander came for lunch and began looking at the photo albums I offered him while lunch was being readied, I discovered we had even closer ties from my days in Loon Straits.

16. Brander established a Facebook accounts of which I became a friend and so furthered the network concept that Steve had begun.

17. Through this network I became aware of Don Claassen and Isadore Charters. Isadore had begun to attend the Sardis Church of which Don was a member. By this time we were all becoming aware of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission coming to Vancouver in 2013 and beginning to think of how we needed to be prepared for that in our conference and congregations. This was an agency established to give a hearing to victims of the residential school fiasco and educate the rest of Canada more about what had happened here and how it related to the whole First Nations-Canada relationships that has suffered so much. Isadore had the idea of creating a healing totem pole for First Nations and whites to all take part in carving together as an act of reconciliation and taking it to church is and other places in BC where it could be well come and able to meet that expectation. One of these places was the international Mission Festival that takes place in January every winter in Vancouver.

18. I attended the MC-BC conference in 2012. I attended Brander's workshop there. Don and Isadore were there with their pole, but we were already planning to have them come to our congregation, so I did not carve on the pole at the time.

19. I learned at the conference that the Service, Peace and Justice Committee was looking for members. I discussed this with a former Missions and Service Committee member of Peace Mennonite Church, Ken Kehler, and we both decided to check this out further. This resulted in both of us attending a couple of meetings of the committee, after which Ken decided he needed to withdraw at this time.

20. Anne and I also went at the end of February to make our first appearance at a sharing circles with the Hummingbird Ministries folk at Tsawassen First Nation Band Hall for a potluck and sharing evening. This was, of course, hosted by Mary Fontaine and other leadership of Hummingbird Ministries. We were well received and made many good connections that's we have continued to build on.

21. Anne and I also stopped at the Marpole Midden site next to the Arthur Lang Granville Bridge In Vancouver. The Musqueam band was protesting the development on what turned out to be burial ground of theirs. I had sent emails to the Musqueam band to try and make a connection leading up to the MC BC conference being held here and just in general but had gotten no response. I got some further names from the people at the site but still got no response when I tried those.

22. Don Claassen and Isadore Charters came to share in our worship service and Adult Education Hour about the legacy of the residential schools among first Nations peoples. They came to Richmond on Saturday and stayed overnight with us in our home. They also returned to our place for lunch on Sunday before returning to Sardis. Isadore, or Yemmo, his childhood name, which he likes being called, tells a powerful story. With his history of being a child in the residential school, I had some concerns about him sleeping in a strange bed, especially an exposed one in our loft, but to my great relief and joy, he said he had a wonderful rest.

23. In attending the Vancouver School of Theology Convocation because of former patient of mine was being honoured with an Honorary Degree and really wanted me to attend, I took note of the part in the ceremony played by Musqueam Elder Rose Point.

24.  Towards the end of June, Anne and I motored out one rainy Saturday to the Sto:lo Band Hall east of Agassi to attend a potluck and sharing circle hosted jointly by that First Nation, MCC-BC and MC-BC. Darryll Klassen of cc, Gary Janzen and Brander and his wife Jill were part of the proceedings. First Nations Singer Cheryl Bear-Barnetson, her husband Randy and one of her sons were also featured artists. It was a good time of fellowship, sharing and learning from one another.

25. I was notified in June that Rose Point had passed away and that it would be a good connection to attend the funeral. Pastor Tim Kuepfer and I did, although we did not make any connections there other than signing a guestbook.

26. I made connections again with Brander McDonald, Don Claassen and Isadore Charters at the MC Canada conference in Richmond in July. Don and Isadore had the Healing Pole there and I finally took steps to carve in it. We had hoped, and I had tried, to make the proper connections and invitations for the Musqueam to give us a traditional welcome to their territory. However, we were not successful and Brander had to do somewhat of a stand-in. Besides Brander and Don/Isadore’s being at the conference to present what they had to offer, we did also have another First Nations lady and an academic presenting a case together from a local (Chilliwack) situation of where the mother was being prosecuted for fishing.

27. I maintained my contact with Hummingbird Ministries and on October 27, having gotten approval from our Peace Mennonite Church Council, we hosted them in our building to have the workshop and practice for their upcoming third annual Peace through the Arts Festival.

28. Thus it was, that on November 9, Friday and 10, Saturday, our church hosted this Hummingbird Ministries Peace through the Arts Festival. A number of people from our congregation helped out, in particular the sound people Erwin Klassen and Roby Chakrabarti. Others helped prepare the food during the day on Friday. Others, particularly my wife Anne and daughter Anika, helped the Hummingbird People and their guests in the kitchen and with the food and dining all day, as well as the big clean-up after. As I had on the 27th, I remained present to do what I could to help things proceed and work out smoothly enough. I did also give of my own time and talents to share in singing for songs of my composition, accompanying myself on the piano, as one of the artists. Two of the songs dealt with particularly First Nations Topics, having arisen from my time in South Indian Lake many years previously.

According to word from Executive Director Mary Fontaine afterwards, they felt the Festival had been quite successful in terms of the number of performers, what was shown, the number of volunteers and attendees. We had been advertising it with bulletin inserts In our congregation and I was a little disappointed at the attendance. I subsequently also had a bulletin insert given out for a couple of Sundays to promote the new Hummingbird Ministries CD, Silent Voices, which was released about the time of the festival.

29. Then, on December 15, Anne and I again made the journey to the Tsawassen First Nations Band Hall to help and be a guest at the Hummingbird Ministries Christmas Sharing Circle. This time we were pleased to see that our MC-BC Conference Pastor Gary Janzen was that there. In fact, he read the Christmas story from Luke chapter 22 help begin the sharing Circle. Brander McDonald and his wife were also present. To emphasize the multicultural aspects of this gathering, there were a number of guests of Pakistani origin, linked to a Gospel Church in Surrey, who also played and sang for us. Other nationalities and ethnicities present included Korean, Dutch, Irish, and Chinese. First Nations represented Prairie, BC interior and BC coastal peoples.

30. I’ve accepted the nomination of Henry Krause, Chair of the MC-BC Service, Peace and Justice Committee, to become a full-fledged member of the committee if I am elected at the annual meeting in February. That platform is another vehicle to advance this cause of reconciliation between First Nations people and us.

- This document was first completed and shared with other members of this movement on January 1, 2013.  The first three paragraphs were added as an introduction to this blog.

I would invite any readers of this to raise questions that might help me clarify my stand, role and direction in this process further. Thank you.