Schedule for 2025 Online Gathering
We’re pleased to share the schedule for the CYM Gathering 2025. Join us as we Gather online June 12 – 15, 2025.
Managing your schedule
We chose not to subscribe to the software platform “Sched,” to house the schedule this year. We feel right about “staying local” with our purchases.
We’ll send all of the Zoom links directly to you by email. That’s why it’s important to register for the Gathering even though there is no registration fee. You’ll also be able to find the Zoom links on the Business side of Quaker.ca. Please take a moment now to register yourself on the Business side if you haven’t already.
We’ll seek to create our Annual Gathering community within the quaker.ca/yearlymeetinginsession. You’ll find all the information you need here.
Opening Session
The Gathering leads off Thursday, June 12 (3:30 pm Pacific – 7:30 pm Atlantic) with the Opening Session. This is a time to welcome one another back into the community of the Yearly Meeting. Note that this year, the Opening Session includes a short Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business! As our first Meeting with Attention to Business of the Gathering this Meeting is our welcome, our time to acknowledge the land we meet on, we hear the Opening Minute, and rejoice to see how many are present as we name each Meeting. We hear the list of those who have joined our community through birth or membership, and those we miss in death. This is our time to record in our Minutes that we are still here, faithful to the promptings of the Spirit.
Sunderland P.Gardner Lecture
Robert (Asher) Kirchner is a member of Edmonton Monthly Meeting, and a retired professor of linguistics at the University of Alberta. He identifies as Jewish as well as Quaker. Asher serves on the steering committee of Independent Jewish Voices Canada, and is a founding member of Reform Jews for Human Rights. In winter 2022, under the auspices of Center for Jewish Nonviolence, Asher spent three months living in the Masafer Yatta area of the West Bank, at the invitation of Palestinian activist partners in these villages. His group accompanied shepherds as they grazed their flocks, and children as they attempted to walk to school, documenting any incidents of settler violence. They also witnessed and documented demolitions of Palestinian homes by the occupation forces. Asher returned to the West Bank for ten days in fall 2022 to document settler attacks against Palestinians attempting to harvest their olives. Asher’s SPG ministry will reflect on his experience as a dual-tradition Quaker and Jew, as well his experience of solidarity as a protective accompaniment worker in Palestine and as an activist in Canada.
Affinity Groups
Affinity Groups are an opportunity for Friends to meet and share their lives with each other in a space where their lives are more likely to be understood because of similarities of experience.
A Friend on Program Committee first encountered the practice of Affinity Groups in a Quaker retreat where Friends of color felt alienated by less-than-thoughtful and less-than-self-aware statements by white Friends.
The Friends of color got together in an Affinity Group and reported feeling edified and supported in this experience. The white Friends also got together in an Affinity Group and had an opportunity to learn why something well-meant might be less-than-thoughtful or less-than-self-aware without having to alienate the Friends of Color or having to require their labor.
An Affinity Group could be but is not limited to: Friends of color, Friends who are indigenous, white Friends, Friends who benefit materially from white supremacy, Friends with a disability, Friends who are nonbinary, Friends who are women, Friends who are men, queer Friends, Friends who are of a lower class, Friends who are parents, Friends who are not parents, Friends who are aging, or Friends with a lower income.
As proposed, Affinity Groups are a community-building opportunity to share our lives and get to know each other as people without having to explain or justify ourselves.
Please request an Affinity Group space by June 1, using this form. If you request a space after June 1, we’ll do our best to fit you in.
Note that there is space in the schedule for Special Interest Groups for topic-oriented learning sessions. Affinity Group time and time for Special Interest Group sessions are Friday June 13 and Sunday June 15 afternoons beginning at 12:30 pm Central.
Friday June 15, 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm Central
Queer Friends
This Affinity Group is for queer Friends and Friends who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, nonbinary, intersex, or questioning their gender or sexuality.
Sunday June 15 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm Central
Gender Queer Friends and Their Allies
This is a group of Friends who wish to raise up the profile and Inclusion of Gender Queer folks in our Quaker community. We encourage Friends (Trans, Non-binary and their allies) to come to share our experiences of the gender spectrum, challenges and the work ahead to be a truly welcoming community and celebrate the joy of our gender queer participants as part of God’s creation.
Special Interest Groups
Special Interest Groups (SIGs) are concurrently-scheduled sessions that offer opportunities to gather in smaller groups and explore topics that move Friends. In a SIG you might learn, discern, share, explore, or participate in an activity of community building. The topics span the breadth of individual and corporate Quaker interests. You do not need to sign up to attend a SIG, just turn up to the session!
If you would like to present a SIG at the Annual Gathering, we ask that you discern with your Monthly Meeting, or a clearness committee, or another Friendly sounding board. When you are prepared to proceed, please be in touch by June 1, using this form. If you request a SIG after June 1, we’ll do our best to fit you in.
Special Interest Group sessions are Friday, June 13, and Sunday, June 15, afternoons beginning at 12:30 pm Central.
These are the Special Interest Group (SIG) sessions planned:
Friday June 13 12:30 pm– 2:00 pm Central
Loving our Neighbours across the 49th parallel: Conversation with American Friends (Glenn Morison)
The session picks up the theme of World Quaker Day this year, Loving your Neighbour, and considers its meaning in the context of Canada and the USA having the worst relations they have had since 1812, with aggressive tariffs and overt threats being made to our sovereignty.
Glenn Morison, of Winnipeg Monthly Meeting, who is an active leader in the Friends World Committee for Consultation (Section of the Americas) has invited a group of his colleagues to join us as we speak and listen and ruminate together with the guidance of queries and advices that speak both to the theme “love your neighbour” and our current geopolitics.
Considering Chaplaincy in CYM (Beverly Shepard)
We will hear the issues that influence whether CYM should continue to affirm chaplains, consider the responses to the survey sent out by the Ad Hoc Committee on Chaplaincy, and listen as participants share their views on this matter.
Staying True to Our Words: A Conversation on Reparations and Reconciliation – CFSC
This special interest group will begin with a presentation from Canadian Friends Service Committee’s Indigenous Rights Committee. They’ll provide a brief summary of Friends’ reconciliation commitments, what paying reparations to Indigenous Peoples might look like, why it is important, and how we can take next steps. There will also be lots of room for Friends to ask questions and dialogue together. The hope is to create a space of honest sharing and to invite discernment on the payment of reparations to Indigenous Peoples as a way of staying true to the commitments we’ve made in previous minutes.
Sunday 15, 12:30 pm-2:00 pm Central
Canadian Friends through the Years (CYM Library and Archives Committee)
Representatives from CYM Library and Archives Committee will explore our story from the 1955 re-unification.
Canadian Yearly Meeting was born in 1955 when three Canadian (Ontarian) Yearly Meetings re-united. Why were there these three yearly meetings? What led to early divisions? What led to their re-uniting? How has Quakerism in Canada spread and developed since 1955? Come and explore Canadian Friends through the years for some insights into these parts of Canadian Quaker history.
Worship Sharing with regard to Medical Assistance in Dying (June Etta Chenard)
This session offers an opportunity for worship-sharing on the topic of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID). The topic of MAID is often on Friends’ minds though we seldom have an opportunity to share our beliefs and feelings about it when we are together.
Most of us have a family member or friend who has already contemplated, or perhaps used, this assistance. It may also be that we ourselves have thought of it in our future considerations.
If you are so led, here is a suggested reading, from Britain Yearly Meeting, which in 2019 asked British Friends to discern matters related to Medical Assistance in Dying.
This session does not look to form a report or recommendation but simply to consider and share from a place of worship.
Discussion on Asher Kirchner’s SPG Lecture
This session offers an opportunity to discuss Asher Kirchner’s Sunderland P. Gardner Lecture from the day before.