A former Kelowna Gran and KAIROS member, Sheila Moss, went to Mexico in 2005 to see how Free Trade is working and affecting poor Mexicans. It seems Canada is NOT a champion of human rights.
March 6, International Women's Day, we led the singing of "Bread and Roses" and gave a background of the song's origin. A good day!
For the third consecutive year we opened the Travelling World Community Film Festival, March 11, at University of British Columbia Okanagan with 8 songs. This group of social issue films attracts a diverse group of people including many grans over the weekend. Several Penticton Grans joined us on the anniversary of the Iraq invasion at the United Church, where our six songs recieved much applause.
April 28th a sparsely attended annual "Day of Mourning" for killed or injured workers saw three of us attend.
May 1st the Hospital Employees Union & South Okanagan Labour
Council family picnic was well attended! Grans did several songs,
and enjoyed the musical group "Labour Pains". One of our group
was able to attend the annual Mothers' Day Peace gathering at
Osoyoos border crossing. It's a moving and fun event.
May 29th Grans joined the Walk for Schizophrenia, singing when the bagpiper took a rest.
We warned a brunch crowd at the Humane Society all-day fundraiser June 12th all songs may not be "appetizing" as they pertained to cleaning up after your dog, etc. They must have appreciated our messages, as their thankyou was 3 bottles of wine!
June 14th we met
for a picnic with Penticton Grans at the George Ryga Heritage
House in Summerland, though we didn't take the wine with us!
June 21st some of us enjoyed buffalo burgers and Aboriginal Day festivities;
we had a few songs. June 25th Kiwanis, MADD, and Seniors' Groups
again had petitions to increase drunk driving penalties. We attend
to attract attention! The Food Bank kicked off "Christmas in July"
June 29th with the Downtown Business Association. We participated,
of course.
The Women's Resource Centre invited us to the Street Festival in
downtown Kelowna August 6th -- too much noise for even us to overcome!
Hiroshima Day is an annual event for us. However, the Farmers' Market,
August 24th was new, for their annual Kids' Day.
We missed the Whidbey Island event by hearing after the fact. An area of Abbott Street (Kelowna) celebrates International Car Free Day September 24th, we rage and rove. That same day a Peace March downtown -- our second two-event day of the year!
Homelessness Awareness Week was recognized October 23rd at a block party downtown Kelowna. A muticultural event for Global Citizen's Week October 29th sponsored by Canada World Youth, Community Resources, and Hope For The Nations, was attended by hundreds, but very poor acoutstics when food was available.
We fret about Wal-Mart. Should we "do something" other than learning more about their employee and manufacturing practices in countries of origin? They opened in Kamloops (B.C.) for 24 hours several days prior to Christmas last year, and plan this for other cities next year.
It's a Girl's World Expo in February, 2006, had many activities and a huge turnout of teenage schoolgirls. Our "workshop" covered the Famous Five and Person case, Granny history, and various songs about women, condoms, Monsanto, etc. The schoolgirls wrote a couple of songs -- we both had fun!
March 4th we closed the International Women's Day celebration, after much other fine entertainment. We sang greetings to the public entering the Iraq Invasion 3rd Anniversary, March 19th. We were part of 2 World Water Day events March 22nd. We'll do better for the next Elizabeth Fry Dance-a-thon fundraiser!