Honouring the Gifts of Curiosity

Young members of our Religious Education Program at First Unitarian Congregation of Nanaimo informed the congregation of the refugee crisis using statistics from the UNHCR. This was read to us at the end of the service.

Here are their questions and answers:

• How many people around the world are forced to leave their homes each day because of conflict and persecution? 28,300.
• What countries do most refugees in the world come from? Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Somalia.
• How many refugees and migrants have died or gone missing while trying the cross the Mediterranean Sea? More than 8,000.
• How many people in the world are living away from home because of war, persecution and conflict? Over 70 million and half are children.
• What country had the largest number of resettled refugees last year and had the second highest rate of refugees who gained citizenship? Canada.
• How many refugees did Canada take in 2018? Canada took in 28,100 of the 92,400 refugees who were resettled in 25 countries during 2018.
• How many refugees became Canadian citizens in 2018? Over 18,000.
• How many people applied to come to Canada as an asylum seeker in 2018? Canada placed 9th in the world for asylum seekers with 55,400 claims filed in 2018.
• In 2016 in Canada, how many refugees and asylum seekers were homeless? 2,000 refugees sleeping in shelter, not counting those facilities designated specifically for refugees - double from two years earlier. 14% of people who identified as homeless in 2018 were newcomers to Canada.

Thank you to the young people in that program and to Sybil the program director.

Here is a link to Global News report  which was also used for information.

Doing the right thing

What does that mean - to 'do the right thing?' The 'thing' we need to do generally is something life changing – affecting us personally – or the lives of others in close relationships with us. Or, it involves a broader social & political decision that will effect the entire planet – in the spirit of Hawking's warning: “[Humanity is facing] a number of [real and existential] threats to our survival from nuclear war, catastrophic global warming, and genetically engineered viruses.” Perhaps the right thing that needs to be done will consist of the sum total of all of the smaller 'right thing' decisions of people like us – decisions which taken together and across the entire planet could really effect world change.

Russell McNeil, PhD (Physics)
Presented November 20, 2016 at First Unitarian Fellowship of Nanaimo

The Not Impossible Plan

December 13, 2015,  Don Gayton, a clean energy engineer gave a presentation to the Unitarian Fellowship of Nanaimo about his five-year journey studying and working on potential solutions to climate change and his strong belief that it is not an impossible task to retire fossil fuel use by mid century. 

It was so well received a workshop was given a couple of weeks later.

Zale Dalen was motivated then to create this Video to get Don's message out.  It is brief, easy to understand and inspiring.  Please watch and encourage your friends to view this.