A Modern Look at Slavery

"Justice requires action. It’s not enough to learn about the injustices of slavery unless we’re willing to put action behind it."                — Justin Dillon, CEO & Founder of Slavery Footprint

There are 27 million slaves in the world today. 

Find out how many work for you at www.slaveryfootprint.org.

8th Fire

À ne pas manquer –  Une excellente série à Zone Doc de Radio-Canada sur les Autochtones et le Canada, le sentier de l'avenir. Soyez prêts à pleurer, rager, rire, et retrouver l’espoir.  


Vendredi à 21h, dimanche à 14h et 20h. Plus d'info: Le 8e feu


Don’t miss the 3rd episode tonight on CBC of Doc Zone’s 8th Fire on Aboriginal Peoples in Canada and the Way Forward. This series demonstrates eloquently that despite the dark chapters of our history and ongoing challenges, First Nations Peoples are once again teaching us how to survive together - as they did some 500 years ago. 


Thursday at  9 PM, More info: 8th Fire

Stanley's Story - Part 2

Stanley's Story Part 1

The young Stanley Bruce Gilbert

Nancy, it must have been devastating news when your long awaited second child, developed leukemia, then went through two years of life saving treatment only to develop epilepsy. What was your initial reaction and how did you cope?


There were many days when I felt we would never take Stan home from the hospital. He went into the hospital as an active but very sick two year old and his condition deteriorated rapidly. We literally lived at the hospital. I was mad at God for allowing this to happen to our son. I told a friend that I couldn’t pray anymore and she said “don’t worry Nancy, we will pray for you” Stan had to go through some very difficult treatments, one where a medication was injected into his spine. There was always lots of staff present to help hold him in position, however, Stan would lie there quietly through the whole procedure, everyone was baffled by his response, I look back on that time and realize that all those prayers were working.

Stanley with his favorite nurse - aunt Jayne

We got though two years of treatment, Stan lost his bright red hair a couple of times and I thought we were home free. Then at age 4 Stan was diagnosed with a severe form of epilepsy (Lennox-Gastaut syndrome) I thought leukemia was bad, having seizures was worse. He went from this happy bright-eyed kid of normal intelligence to a child with glassy eyes from the seizure meds and a steady decline in his intellectual abilities. I often thought, how much more can this child suffer.


The African proverb “It takes a whole village to raise a child” applies to our life with Stan. We have always had solid family and community support as we journeyed with Stan over the past 24 years, through his many ups and downs. We have had to reach out for help many times - for prayer, a shoulder to cry on, or a good home cooked meal.
Stan himself brings out the best in all of us. He will go up to complete strangers and say “Hi, my name is Stanley Bruce Gilbert, what’s your name, where do you live, how old are you, do you have a husband/wife, do you have a dog” We meet a lot of people that way and they don’t forget Stan. Stan draws people into his life, willingly or not! 

Stanley with best buddy - care giver Nick

When Stan began school, his grade 1 teacher told you to keep him home until his seizures got better. What was your reaction then - and what did you do to keep Stanley in school?


With any type of disability, there is always fear of the unknown. I knew that keeping Stan at home just because he had seizures was as unrealistic as keeping him home because he was intellectually challenged. I got as involved as much as possible in Stan’s life, as a volunteer at the school, organizing after school activities, or giving talks about epilepsy, just trying to be a regular mom. Through Stan’s years at school, I have felt that he was welcomed, loved and an important part of each school he attended. Stan transitioned better than I did. I worried when he left elementary to go to junior high, but he did just fine. I worried again when he went off to high school, he had a blast. Along the way Stan met some great teachers, program assistants and students. There are not too many places we go, whether it is McDonalds, the movie theatre, or a hockey game that someone doesn’t stop to say hi to Stan and to say they knew him in school. 

High School Graduation

Over the years, you and your husband Steve have been active participants in several community initiatives:  L'Arche Halifax, the Epilepsy Association of Nova Scotia, Special Olympics, among many others. Why is that community involvement so important?

When Stan had leukemia, I attended a parent support group; everyone had a child with some form of cancer, and we shared our fears and gave each other some hope. When I joined the Epilepsy Association, I was looking for answers to all my questions and they needed a president; 18 years later I still look forward to the annual Christmas party to see how all our friends are doing. My husband Steve joined Special Olympics and became a coach, then the regional coordinator. Special O gives the whole family a place of great acceptance, where we feel relaxed, and a place where Stan's seizures don’t matter.

L’Arche is family to us, a place hopefully that Stan will one day call home. I’m often asked what I do for a living and I say I’m a professional volunteer, a great job that I love, most of the time. I put in countless hours attending meeting, writing reports and always trying to figure out how to raise more money. I have met some wonderful people who are now my friends, and have had lots of laughs along the way. 

Stanley with favorite Special Olympics coach - Dad

L'Arche founder Jean Vanier once said that 'more important than our need to be loved, is our need to belong'.  How would you apply that to your life with Stanley?


Stan is a very social person. He loves to go to floor hockey to see Coach Vic and play on Patrick’s team. When he goes to work at Prescott Group, he is happy to see his instructor Lynn, his friends Ricky, Nicola, Doreen and  ‘the love of his life’, Beth. At the Moosehead hockey games he seeks out the mascots Hal and Mac to say hi and have his picture taken with them once again. At the L’Arche gathering he wanders into the kitchen to see what Judy is doing for snacks, waiting patiently for the lunch to be served, his favorite part of the day.  Before church he gathers his books and checks in with Rod who is studying for the deaconate, they have a chat. Stan thinks that Rod is God. Stan belongs to all of us. 

Go Bruins Go!

At L'Arche Halifax with girlfriend Beth and dad

Stanley's epilepsy has brought with it many other health issues.  How is he doing now?  

Through the hard work of his neurology team, Stan, is enjoying the best quality of life he has had for a long time. He still has seizures, but not every day. We worry less about injury from falls and Stan has gained more independence. Mike picks up Stan in the van for work; they play their favorite music along the way. Stan likes his work most days, every once in awhile he tells me “I quit’, but that thought doesn’t last long. He participates in floor hockey, track and golf with Special Olympics; sometimes it’s hard to get him out the door but once he gets there he really enjoys himself. Stan visits the library, goes bowling or to the movies with our local Community Living Association, another group of great friends. He loves talking on the phone with his big brother Jim and hanging out with his cousins Laura, Bryan, Kate and Luke. He has been blessed with wonderful caregivers, Nick Lynn, Mike and Aaron who love him as a friend. I often look at him when he is listening to his music or doing his stickers and think of how content he seems, how much joy he gets from such small pleasures. He teaches us all how to live in the moment.

With big brother Jim

Nancy, do you have any words of advice or encouragement for families facing the kind of challenges you, your husband Steve and your other son Jim have faced, and still face, caring for Stanley?  

I recently read Ian Brown’s book “The Boy in the Moon”, the story about his son Walker a young boy who lives with severe disabilities. There were no platitudes - just the stark reality of what it is like to live with a child who is challenged and has a myriad of health problems.  Life for most of us is filled with all sorts of uncertainty, we never know what is coming our way, and we will always have good days and bad. A while back, I had a good chat with my older son Jim and he told me of the guilt he carried for many years because his brother was so sick while he himself had gone though life almost too easily, a hard burden to bear. As I age, I find I pray for more patience. I’m not afraid to reach out to our family, friends and community when I need help with a problem or just someone to talk with. My husband Stephen in his spare time likes to play hockey, lacrosse or golf and work in our gardens. All the activity and camaraderie help with the stress I’m sure.

I have my favorite quote from Jean Vanier tacked to my bulletin board “We are not called by God to do extraordinary things, but to do ordinary things with extraordinary love”, something well worth remembering.

On vacation in Florida

Photos provided by Nancy Gilbert

Agir pour les droits humains

Photo: Pierre Saint-Jacques

Les jeunes du Comité droits humains du Centre commémoratif de l'Holocauste à Montréal vous invitent au lancement officiel du nouveau site Internet "Agir pour les droits humains!" Une nouvelle plateforme multimédia pour découvrir une gamme riche en initiatives de justice sociale et de droits de la personne.

Lancement du site Internet Agir pour les droits humains!

Jeudi 19 janvier 2012 à 19h

Au Café l'Artère, 7000 av. du Parc métro Parc ou bus 80

This Child Will Be Great

Looking for a good read now that your holiday books are finished? I highly recommend: This Child Will Be Great  - the autobiography of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.  I couldn’t put it down! President Sirleaf  - first female president of an African nation (Liberia, re-elected this past Fall),  and winner of the Nobel Prize in 2011 - sets the breathtaking tale of her own life within context of  the equally gripping history of Liberia. Her quest for justice landed her in jail, forced her into exile and eventually opened the door of the presidential office. A real page turner!

Seeing life in a storied fashion

Examining traditional medicine in Zambia

Liz, you have worked with refugees at Montreal City Mission, with copper miners in Zambia, in the non profit sector in Boston and now you are teaching theology at Boston University. What’s the most important thing those diverse experiences have taught you about the role of story telling?

Story telling goes on constantly, individually and collectively. This is the way we make sense of life. One of the big things I have learned concerns how story telling passes a sense of coherence down through generations—helps us understand why things happen, what our roles and responsibilities are and so forth.  When stories collide (as they typically do across cultural boundaries, for example) or when long-told stories disappear from memory, then we confront really big life questions. Answers to these questions are typically taken for granted but they form the bases of our ‘storied’ understanding. So when the foundations of our stories are shaken, it affects what we do and how we subsequently, though subconsciously, retell our tales.

Rev. Daniel Velez-Rivera (Latino Ministry in Salem Mass), Paula, Liz

You once wrote that in the West, the Enlightenment split the world into sacred and secular spheres and we have simply assumed ever since that’s the way things work. How can story telling create a more holistic understanding of what makes us tick?

Along with the sacred/secular split, something else the Enlightenment did for Westerners was train us to think in categories, or chunks, rather than in the more organic manner that story telling employs. Scientific methods that the Enlightenment inspired rely on breaking problems down into categories or chunks for analysis. There is nothing wrong with this. But when we approach everything this way, we miss details that cannot be quantified or measured. Trying to see life in storied fashion can help fill in some of the gaps.

In a recent talk on the future of mission work, you mentioned the importance of the narrative approach. What exactly is that approach and how can it be applied in an urban mission context?

The best brief description of the narrative approach that I have heard was given by my South African doctoral advisor. He said that everything we experience or do we place within a context that has a beginning, middle, and end.  Extending that idea to urban mission sites such as MCM, perhaps whatever happens can only be authentic when the beginnings, middles, and endings of all the stories swirling about (those of refugees, staff members, government officials, and so on) are acknowledged and appreciated even if genuine understanding is lacking.

Dona Fish - symbol of fertility

In the age of reality TV and social media, we eem to know more and more facts about everyone – instantaneously! How does this new context impact the age old art of story telling?

Current patterns do have a tremendous impact on the art of storytelling. Social media and reality TV are communicating their own stories and also training people to think in qualitatively different ways.  But, while technology may seem all pervasive to North Americans, it’s important to remember the global context.  Facebook, for example, has about 800 million active users while there are now 7 billion people on the planet. What stories animate those other 6.2 billion people? How will our disparate tales and ways of thinking interact during the 21st century? What can we learn from each other?

You recently published: What Price for Privatization? Cultural Encounter with Development Policy on the Zambian Copperbelt. What are you working on now?

My present research project is something quite different. I’m editing a series of letters written between my grandparents who were involved in starting small Christian schools throughout the American midwest and south. The letters are historically valuable for the insights they contain about education as Christian mission and about life in the nineteen-teens and twenties. It’s a labor of love and a tribute to my forebears.

What Price for Privatization?

Paula, Liz & former MCM Board chair, Renate Sutherland

Photos provided by Paula Kline & Liz Parsons

Feliz Navidad – Prospero Ano y felicidad! Woo Hoo!

Many thanks to all of our donors and supporters who went the extra mile this past holiday season to spread warmth and good cheer to the MCM community.

Votre engagement et votre amour nous aide à garder un bon moral et nous donne de l’espoir en ces temps difficiles.

A special thanks to the Cedar Park United  Men’s Group (and friends!) for their caroling, decorating and hosting at our annual Project Refuge Christmas Party.  

Thanks as well to Beaconsfield United whose lovely gifts of new hats, gloves, scarves etc were a big hit with the Project Refuge residents.