Canadian Yearly Meeting 2023 will take place July 8-13 online and at the Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg.

Canadian Yearly Meeting (CYM, also known as Yearly Meeting in Session) is a blended gathering once a year for all Canadian Quakers and those interested in or new to Quakers. Its Business Meetings are the main decision-making body of Quakers in Canada. There’s also lots of time for fun and games, music, socializing, and sessions focusing on spiritual development, social justice, and Quaker history. This year, the gathering will include Quaker study sessions, worship, the Sunderland P. Gardner keynote lecture, programming for children and youth, and special interest group workshops.

Greeting from the Canadian Yearly Meeting Clerks

Welcome Friends, to the Canadian Yearly Meeting 2023 Annual Gathering, July 8-13.

This is our first blended gathering! We hope you will join us either in-person – in Winnipeg at the Canadian Mennonite University – or online, zooming in from your homes across Canada.

Much has changed since we last met in August 2019. During the past three years loneliness and fear have been matched with extraordinary community adaptation. Canadian Yearly Meeting has been learning how to meet – to be a Meeting – online. We’ve spanned geographical distances by clicking the “Join” button on our Zoom screens. And we have learned that while online meetings are less than perfect, there are advantages as well as drawbacks.

We need to meet together again, to rekindle in-person relationships and augment our newly thriving online connections through five days of intergenerational activities and community building.

The CYM 2023 program includes most of our usual sessions: Meetings for Worship, Meetings for Worship with Attention to Business, the Sunderland P. Gardner Lecture, Quaker Studies, the Experience of Spirit in our Lives, a Memorial Meeting, Worship Sharing, and Special Interest Groups, as well as a vibrant program for children and teens. We will greet old friends and make new ones.

We have made changes to reduce financial and ecological costs. We’ve moved from August to July, and the gathering is shortened to five days. Many sessions blend online and in-person participation. Some are available only for online participants, and others only for Friends in Winnipeg. Regardless of how you attend, we offer a warm welcome to all Friends July 8-13, 2023.

Please plan for the CYM 2023 Gathering in the way that answers your condition. “We meet, and we are a Meeting.”

Ruth Pincoe and Marilyn Manzer
CYM Clerks

FAQs

These frequently answered questions are, we hope, also frequently asked questions!
The Gathering helpdesk will be active during the gathering, and is open now. Please read the registration information carefully before you start on registering. If you still have questions or are having difficulty, please contact:

Payment questions and any changes to your registration should be directed to the CYM Office at .

If you become sick while at the Canadian Mennonite University please review and follow the health & safety guidelines.

Location, Dates and Time – online and in-person
The Canadian Yearly Meeting 2023 In Session Gathering takes place July 8 – 13, online and in-person, at the Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg.

The Gathering opens with supper in the Dining Hall (or, for delegates, during their meeting) Saturday July 8 at 5 pm Central Daylight Time, and closes Thursday July 13 noon Central Daylight Time, followed by a final lunch in the Dining Hall. After lunch we rise for another year.

Registration

This is the first year we are attempting a blended Yearly Meeting, so you can register either for the online Yearly Meeting, or the in person Gathering in Winnipeg.

Similar and blended programming will be happening across Zoom and at the CMU. See below for how to register and the schedule.

We are looking for volunteers for both in-person roles and online roles, if you feel led to support in this way, please go to this page. 

How to register for the in-person component of the Gathering

Your registration experience is going to go more smoothly if you’re prepared for the choices you’ll be making. Please read the information in these links before you open your registration form:

  • Learn about the registration fees.
  • Learn about the available choices for lodging and meals.
  • Learn about grants that are available to help reduce barriers to attending.
  • Review the program schedule.
  • Review Children and Youth programming.
  • Review the Terms and Conditions. Registration requires your consent.

How to register for the online component of the Gathering

Please read the information in these links before you open your registration form:

The last day to:

  • May 25: Grant application deadline
  • May 31 : Register young ones for a guaranteed spot in the Children and Youth Program
  • June 26: Register and book lodging and meals for in-person attendance
  • Always available: Provide a charitable receipted donation to CYM in addition to the Gathering registration fee. Registration fees do not cover the cost of the event so your additional donation is incredibly welcome. It’s easy to include the donation in your registration form. If you do include a donation as part of your registration from, please note that you will not receive a charitable donation receipt until some time after the Gathering.

Friends, please respect the deadlines; there are many moving parts to this blended gathering and we’ll all have a better time if we can keep the predictable parts predictable.

Need more help?
If you have questions or need assistance with registering, please contact: cymhelp@quaker.ca.

Once you have read the website information, to register for the in-person Canadian Yearly Meeting 2023, please go to this registration page. You will need to register on this registration link after reading the website information. You will then need to pay with the office offline.

Online participants will register and pay online through Canada Helps.

To register for the online Yearly Meeting 2023, please go to this registration page.

CYM is undertaking a shift in structure and working to be more transparent about the complete costs of programming. There are considerable costs to support the Yearly Meeting in Session (e.g., insurance, facility rental, tech support, required positions, etc.), which have been historically subsidized. For this blended meeting, we estimate the full cost to be over $800 per person. In addition to the registration fee, we appreciate and are very grateful for any additional donations towards the CYM subsidy for this event.

Suggested donations:

  • 15% of cost $ 90
  • 25% of cost $150
  • 50% of cost $300
  • or alternate

Registration Fees

The registration fee for online and in-person for CYM2023 is $200 per person, with discounts for additional household members. Free for children and Youth under 18.

Grants

If you have financial barriers to attending in either the in-person or online, please go to this page for grant information for both Friends and Young Adult Friends.

The deadline for grant applications for financial assistance to participate in the gathering is 25th May, and CYM’s Education & Outreach committee will be discerning grants by the 1st June 2023 and informing the grantees directly.

Schedule

We’re using Sched again this year to manage the Gathering’s program – both in-person and online. We call it the CYM Planner. We need an email address for every registrant over 18 years old to set this up. The Planner is the place for all the information you need to get to the events (such as room number or Zoom link) you want to attend. If you attended the Gathering online last year, you’ll still be in the Planner for this year. When you register for the Gathering—online or in-person—we’ll set you up in the Planner and send you an email with the information you need to get up and running with it.

You can find more information about the schedule on this page.

Accommodation

There are several types of accommodation available at the Canadian Mennonite University, you will be asked to book yours when you register.

The options available are:

  • Tenting – shared and single
  • Shared or single accommodation with air conditioning
  • Shared or single accommodation without air conditioning

All the prices shown on the Accommodation page are per person, per room, except for tenting.

Children 0 – 3 years old stay free in your room. The University does not have cribs or “pack and play” units for use. You must bring your child’s sleeping gear.

Children 4 – 11 years old stay at half the quoted room price. If you and your child share a double room, the cost will be the full double rate for you and half the double rate for your child.

Alternatively, your child 4 -11 years old can stay for free in your room if you bring your own sleeping/air mattress and sleeping bag and they sleep on the floor (which might be very tight).

Meals

Accommodation and meals outside of booking times:

The earliest/latest date to check into accommodation at the Canadian Mennonite University is Wednesday, July 5, and check out Sunday, July 16. A longer stay may be possible, but you will need to contact the university directly.

CYM does not have the capacity to coordinate meals outside of the scheduled event. Participants will need to provide for their own meals (e.g., take-out, share in a grocery run) outside of the scheduled event.

Policies and Terms and Conditions

You can find the Health and Safety policy, the Community Agreement and the Terms and Conditions for attendance here.

Accessibility

We will do our absolute best to make the Canadian Yearly Meeting as accessible as possible. If you have any questions or concerns about accessibility, you can contact:

There is a place in the registration for the in-person Meeting for individuals to share their accessibility requirements.

Children and Youth programming

Please note that to allow time to plan programming we must receive registrations for the Children and Youth program by May 31st. Children or youth registered after June 1 will be welcome to join a group that is already set up – as long as there is enough space – but otherwise they will be in your care during CYM.

The main CYM schedule includes daily opportunities for all ages to come together: a morning Intergenerational Community Gathering (8:45 to 9:30); an Intergenerational Meeting for Worship (1:30 – 2:15); and Family Night (Wed 6:30 – 8:00).

The separate Children & Youth Program will be offered from Sunday to Wednesday during the times when adults will be involved in other CYM activities:

  • mornings 9:30 to 12:00
  • afternoons 2:15 to 4:30
  • evenings 6:15 to 8:00.

Transportation

You can find information about travel to and getting around the CMU campus here.

The Greyhound bus service no longer exists, so the public transit option for ground transportation is the train, for those who prefer not to fly.

For more information, click here.

Docs and Agendas

These will be made available on the CYM business side of the website and via Sched.