Report on Canadian Yearly Meeting (hereafter CYM) for Montreal Monthly Meeting and the Quebec Worship Group from Geoffreyjen Edwards the in person representative to CYM 2023 from MMM.
Arrival onto this quiet campus which is the Canadian Mennonite University. The usual uncertainties as one tries to figure out where to find one’s room, where the meeting spaces are, where the cafeteria is and so on. I’m just walking down a path between the buildings. Meet someone and we talk about my being there to represent Montreal monthly meeting but also the Francophone worship group in Quebec City. My conversant turns out to be somebody who is quite a deep thinker and well grounded in many of the progressive ways of thinking about Quakers. And so begins my engagement with Canadian Yearly Meeting, the 2023 version.
Dinner was at 5pm, in the cafeteria. This was actually a great space for getting to know different people. You could sit anywhere and start up a conversation. So the cafeteria offered a brilliant time to make acquaintances and get to know people, especially so that first night where I didn’t know anyone at all.
That first evening, the Saturday, following dinner, there was a session for delegates, which I understood afterwards was a kind of pre-CYM meeting to accept the roster of names nominated to the different committees, including the CYM clerks. Since the nominated clerk of CYM was ill, on an emergency basis, Celia Cheatley from Argenta Meeting had accepted responsibility for clerking CYM under Marilyn Manzer’s mentorship, who agreed to stay on in that position for another year. At this point, Wesley Weima, representing Young Friends Yearly Meeting (YFYM) raised a concern. Young Friends noted that the nomination of Celia and Marilyn as clerks of CYM created a problem since both were also part of the Change and Sustainable Transformation (or CAST) Working Group. Young Friends were concerned this constituted a situation of conflict of interest, concentrating too much decisional oversight into the same people. However, given the lack of other candidates to take on these demanding roles, it was decided to go ahead, but to come back to the issue raised by Young Friends, perhaps by modifying the membership of the Change and Sustainable Transformation or CAST Working Group. Wesley also mentioned that there were ongoing tensions between Young Friends and CYM, but would not specify further what these involved. I should mention that although I had read ahead of time the minutes of the CYM 2022, of representative meeting 2022, the various committee reports, including from the Change and Sustainable Transformation or CAST Working Group, and the epistles for 2023 and 2022, all of which I felt constituted a large amount of material to make sense of, I found it difficult to fully understand the nuances of what was going on.
In the morning, there was an inter-generational gathering involving singing and some interactive games to engage the young people more fully. Across the five days I thought this worked well to integrate the families within the larger group. It was fun and they had some good activities organized. In the afternoon they held a hybrid meeting for worship with attention to business, including a number of online participants. I think some people from Montreal were virtually present for some of those sessions so that was useful. This meeting was fairly procedural, accepting the nominations brought forward by the delegates meeting. Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business was held every second day, that is, on the Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. For reasons I will get into in a moment, I skipped the second meeting for worship for business to take part in the Youth programming. I have been thinking that at least in Quebec we should give some thought to an offer of youth programming; I thought by engaging with the activities for young people at CYM I might get some ideas about how this could be done. This turned out to be a misstep, in terms of the Meeting for Worship for Business because that 2nd meeting brought up some areas of controversy and as a result of having missed it I had trouble piecing things together afterwards.
I took part in Worship Sharing the first two mornings. Participants were subdivided into smaller groups; there were 5 participants in my group. Each day we were given a “seed” for reflection by our group leader. I found Worship Sharing interesting and useful, and certainly led to good contacts with other Quakers, however, I felt torn between that activity and the youth programme activities which were held at the same time. On the second day, I found a moment to sit with the older children. This allowed me to get to know them a little. On the third day, an excursion to a wetlands reserve had been organized (concurrently with Meeting for Worship for Business) and I felt this was my opportunity to engage more fully with the youth programme. On this second occasion, I spent time with the very young children, and I had a transformative experience in my own personal growth.
When I got back, and realized I had missed an important meeting, I talked to a range of people to get a sense of what had happened. I also made a point of attending the third M4W4B on the final Thursday, where I was finally able to work out what the controversy had been about, more or less. In my understanding, probably only partial and perhaps erroneous in certain details (see the minutes of CYM 2023 for a more official reporting), it seems the Change and Sustainable Transformation CAST Group, which is mandated to rethink modern Canadian quaker practice, had opted to organize CYM in 2024 in Toronto, but the meeting is to be divided between two distinct locations, the Toronto Meeting House for the opening days and Camp Neekaunis for the final ones. This proposal was not greeted with enthusiasm by a number of people, who doubt the capacity to accept large numbers of participants (finding billeting, for example), or the suitability of Camp Neekaunis for such a large gathering. Others seemed to think that “needs must”, that things would work out fine. I heard both these perspectives. The whole discussion seemed to be exacerbated by the problem of declining rosters of people willing to serve on the numerous committees, and hence discussions about the effective use of resources.
I am not sure I need to present the full details of the controversy here; one should consult the minutes of CYM for the official version. I have also been told Montreal MM has rarely engaged much with CYM in the past.
Personally, I think this is a shame. The Canadian Quaker community, from my perspective, and if anything my attendance at CYM reinforced this perception, is a vibrant, multifaceted community with something like 50 Monthly Meetings and Worship Groups, each with their own unique perspectives and practices but all grounded in the same spiritual soil. The more I learn about other Monthly Meetings, and Worship Groups, the more fascinated I become. There’s so much to learn here, simply by listening to each other. I also came away from my CYM experience with a sense that our fledgeling francophone community could find a place in the broader Canadian Quaker landscape, that there are people at CYM who are passionate about the project of integrating the francophones.
And I may not fully understand the tension present at CYM this year, but I rather think that understanding our resources and how to better use them goes to the heart of what it means to be a Quaker in our century, and it is a question we are also struggling with in Montreal and even at the Quebec Worship Group to some extent. I had a very interesting and prolonged private discussion with one young friend about their concerns. One of the issues Young Friends believe needs to be addressed is a deeper focus on Quaker traditions and on the divine leadings within these. As I discovered, CYM tends to be heavily “procedural”, and I think loses sometimes this focus.
Part of the ongoing discussion about CYM concerns the respective roles of Representative Meeting, the online meeting that manages CYM business over the year, CYM itself, and the Continuing CYM Ministry and Counsel Committee, which tries to stay abreast of M&C issues at the national level. With the consolidation of online practices inside the Canadian Quaker community, it seems likely that these structures will need to be adjusted. There was also a discussion about the cost of CYM - the meeting was expensive this year.
Concerning the francophone issues, I engaged in numerous discussions, with Communications Director Holly Spencer and Marilyn Manzer, the former Clerk of CYM, but also an extensive exchange with Gwen Anderson, who is on the programme committee for CYM ‘24, and her partner, over dinner. Gwen is one of the people who was particularly pleased about the growing engagement of francophones inside the Canadian Quaker community and the possibilities of finding the means to welcome a significant francophone cohort at CYM, perhaps as early as next year. We discussed the idea that for this to happen, there would need to be a sequence of discussions over the coming year, between the CYM programme committee perhaps and the Montreal and Quebec City groups. I realized over the course of the week that a significant number of people spoke French who did not present that way. Overall, I think there are significantly more speakers of French than one might naively expect. As a result, I think the integration of francophones could be made to work.
There could be, for example, worship sharing groups in French that wouldn’t be limited to the Quebec group, that would involve mingling with others, which I think is desirable. Meeting for Worship for Business and some of the other discussion activities would need to be provided with interpreters, costly perhaps but important. The load for translation cannot be allowed to fall solely or even primarily on our own francophone members, if they are to feel welcomed at CYM.
A final set of remarks. I was also deeply interested in the work of the Canadian Friends Service Committee and what it has to offer, both to MMM and to the Quebec group if we could enable this to happen. CFSC, The Canadian Friends Service Committee is currently active in mainly three areas: in activism with respect to prisons, with respect to peace, and regarding indigenous populations. There were several excellent presentations addressing indigenous issues at CYM that were appreciated, including the Sunderland P. Gardner keynote lecture by Richard (Dick) Preston on “Truth and Reconciliation: a personal view from 60 years of learning Cree culture”, and a presentation on the Sunday evening by a Cree anglican priest Vince Solomon on the subject of “The Movement of the Spirit in my Life”. The focus on peace is, of course, a consequence of the Peace Testimony, which is the reason I initially got interested in Quakers. Since members of MMM have met several times to discuss the Ukraine war, this is close to our own preoccupations. There was a very informative presentation by members of the CFSC committee on peace about the Ukrainian War. I will offer a report on this at another time; I think Montreal and Quebec Quakers will be interested. The second area of activity is in relation to the radical Quaker position that prisons should be abolished altogether. It is still an issue I think of as quintessentially Quaker, since it dates from Margaret Fell’s activism in the earliest days of the Quaker movement in the UK. The engagement with indigenous issues seems to me an appropriate third area for Quakers, especially in the Canadian context, where the need to redress our country’s treatment of indigenous peoples is so pressing.
What CFSC lacks, in my view, is a focus on LGBTQ+ issues. I understand the problem of diminishing resources, but LGBTQ+ issues, for me, go the heart of what it is to be human, hence Quaker. And if we want young people to stay involved, or to attract new folk, I think a focus on LGBTQ+ issues is not only important, but perhaps key. Furthermore, my experience at CYM suggests there is a need for education of Canadian Quakers in this area. I heard some reactions that deeply perturbed me about my own non-binary status as well as about pronoun use. I also learned from a gay member of Toronto MM that Toronto has a small support group, but I found the lack of anything like this at CYM made it hard for me to feel safe there. I talked with the Vimce Zelazny, the Clerk of CFSC and he mentioned that CFSC had been active on the issue of gay marriage but had not done much since. This, in my opinion, needs to happen. I am told that a sizeable fraction of MMM identifies as “queer” - this would seem to me a priority issue for MMM and our possible involvement in the work of CFSC as well as in CYM. I intend to engage with CFSC with just such a focus.
When I talked with Holly Spencer, the Communications Director, about the need for a stronger presence of the French language on the Canadian Quaker website, I also noted that the CFSC site has no French whatsoever.
This, for me, is a significant failing. I do not know if francophone members of MMM and the Quebec Worship Group will want to engage with CFSC, but I think there is a real possibility of this if the infrastructure was there to facilitate it. I see this as part of a recruitment strategy - for many of us, it is Quaker positions on issues that attracted us to Quakers in the first place. Holly Spencer said she would talk to the website manager of the CFSC site about developing a French presence there. And there is growing awareness now at CYM of the issue of enabling the creation of documentation on Quakerism in French, including Faith and Practice.
In summary, CYM is a complex entity that nonetheless provides access to a broad cross-section of Canadian Quakers as well as important discussions about the future of Quakerism in Canada today. I had numerous discussions with members of maybe 20 other monthly meetings and worship groups which were highly illuminating. Some had interesting alternatives to the balance between online and in-person meetings, and other issues that concern us in Montreal and Quebec. I actually want to encourage more “visiting”, both online and in person. I hope to convince members (and attendees!) of Montreal Monthly Meeting and the Assemblée des Quakers de Québec of not only the benefits of engaging with CYM but also its vital importance for the future of our communities. No monthly meeting or worship group can truly operate without consideration of the larger whole. This was part of my reason for bringing the needs of the francophone community to CYM. I think if the Quebec Worship Group finds a welcome at the national level, our ability to flourish will be greatly enhanced. And the same is true of Montreal Monthly Meeting.
Finally, I would like to see an initiative from MMM and the QWG to meet with the programme committee for CYM’24 to discuss enabling a francophone presence at CYM; the fact that CYM next year may be held in Toronto seems particularly fortuitious for such an objective. I would also like to see followup happening on the question of enhancing documentation in French of the Quaker.ca website, the CFSC website, and other printed documents, but am unsure how to proceed on ensuring that that occurs. And thirdly, I would like to see followup on addressing issues of LGBTQ+ support and safety within the Canadian Quaker community, initiated by our groups here in Montreal and Quebec.