Athée Canadien
Posts tagged CFI
CFI Canada: Resignations and Revelations
Nov 28th
As promised, today brings another wave of resignations from Centre for Inquiry Canada. It must be clear that the Board of Director’s official statement was insufficient to prevent further haemorrhaging.
This morning CFI Vancouver Executive Director Jamie Williams resigned and was followed shortly by Committee for the Advancement of Scientific Skepticism (CASS) co-chair Michael Kruse. While Jamie didn’t discuss his reasoning openly in his email to the CFI Vancouver Google Group, Michael provided a detailed note on Facebook discussing his concerns.
In the note, Michael discusses his disappointment with the split in the board and his concerns that the branding project is now at risk. He had hoped for a more structured and professional CFI with a clear mandate. Instead recent events have put that possibility in jeopardy.
He also discusses his desire to found a new group dedicated to promote scientific skepticism outside of CFI. His group’s focus will irk PZ Myers-loyalists though:
…the promotion of atheism and secularism, a promotion that I value highly, is yet a hindrance to our attempts to promote scientific skepticism, and that an organisation that is committed to promoting critical thinking and science will be more successful if it has only that as a focus.
From what I had heard of the results of the branding process, CFI would have been dropping humanism and community building from its core mandate in favour of focussing on tackling winnable skeptical and secular issues. Despite the fact that this thoroughly refutes the accommodation-confrontation narrative, this also seems to be the direction that Michael is hoping to head in.
Locally though, volunteers are quickly following Jamie in the exodus. Treasurer, book club, and blood drive coordinator (and my wife) Sonia Milbradt has resigned. Each resignation was quick to acknowledge how much they valued our local community. The planned Solstice Potluck between the BC Humanists and CFI Vancouver will continue, as will December’s blood drive and book club.
Finally, from the comments on my big piece (and a follow up email with me), former board member Ian McCuaig revealed that Justin Trottier’s uncle and board member Lorne Trottier had promised to make a $100,000 donation to CFI Canada next year provided Justin could be given a position. While Lorne has been a substantial donor in the past, this new donation sounded conditional to Ian.
This reeks of corruption and nepotism. We expect this from churches, not from an organization dedicated to rationalism.
When the dust settles, the community will go on. While CFI Vancouver has lost a number of capable and dedicated members today, I am confident the Vancouver freethinking community will remain vibrant.
CFI Montreal gets some good press
Nov 27th
In spite of the strife within the national leadership, local branches of CFI Canada are still pushing forward and putting on events.
CFI Montreal was featured in the Montreal Gazette yesterday in an article that talks about their bookclub and what they’ve been up to.
The truth is out there. It just might not be found at a church, near a crop circle, or in a dated X-Files reference. According to Jen Carmen, a good place to start is the Montreal Freethinkers Book Club. A discussion group associated with the local chapter of Centre for Inquiry Canada – an organization dedicated to promoting secularism, science, and critical thinking – the Club is ideal for those who, Car-men says, are "open minded, open to discussion, open to learning new things."
Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Freethinkers+take+subjects/5770865/story.html#ixzz1ey0k90f5
The article makes the common mistake that CFI Canada ran the “There’s Probably No Bus Ads”. They’ve run the ad in Kelowna, but otherwise the Freethought Association of Canada was responsible for those ads.
Otherwise, it’s a good article and links to their book club’s meetup group: meetup.com/cfimontreal/
Reasonable Women Vancouver branches out
Nov 6th
Edited: I made a couple errors in my original post. I’ve edited it accordingly below.
First off, I want to say that am posting this because I think it’s important news about the secular community in Vancouver. I really want to avoid hearsay, rumours, and any other gossip, especially directed at any of the groups involved. Everyone involved in this situation is still friends (as far as I know).
A couple months ago, CFI Vancouver created a discussion group for secular women in Vancouver. Their goal was to provide a safe place for women in skepticism to gather and talk.
Whether or not you agree with segregated meetups is irrelevant to this story.
Yesterday the organizer of the group, tentatively called Reasonable Women (RW) Vancouver, posted this to her Facebook page:
Reasonable Women:
We are no longer affiliated with CFI Canada, as of today. This changes some things for us when it come to financial support, organization of future events, recruitment of new members, etc. I think this is both a small set back and a great opportunity to help us redefine our goals, aims and procedures. As I stated at our previous meeting, we need to create something like a board of directors or a committee to help us manage Reasonable Women better. I would be in favour of an egalitarian, vote-based system, where all members participate.
I’m not sure the exact specifics that precipitated this change, but I think it had to do with a desire for greater autonomy for RW.
CFI has always had a corporate top-down structure. This helped it expand quickly, since a national strategy can be implemented, but it can be less responsive to local concerns. While CFI Vancouver has recently been very effective at promoting local community initiatives (with a number of successful meetups and events), those initiatives still fall within CFI’s branding and are expected to conform to the national vision. This can obviously lead to conflicts among freethinkers who each have their own goals and visions. The herding cats analogy comes quickly to mind.
While schisms like this can leave hurt feelings and frustrations, this may be a case where each group is better off focussing on their own goals. In some cases it makes sense for skeptics, humanists, atheists, etc. to pool our resources and work together, but in other cases it may be better to stick with what we’re each passionate about and try to not compete with one another.
There is also the chance that RW Vancouver can seek out support from other sources, or alternatively they can build their own membership base.
Change at the top
Sep 26th
Big news from CFI Canada today:
To All CFI Canada Friends and Supporters,
The Board of Directors of Centre for Inquiry Canada is pleased to announce the appointment of Derek Pert as National Executive Director, effective immediately. We are excited to have Derek continue the outstanding work he has done in facilitating a new strategic plan and organizing the move to our new headquarters.
The Board would also like to announce that Justin Trottier, the former National Executive Director, is leaving CFI Canada to pursue other interests. We thank Justin for his commitment to the organization and for providing a voice for secularism and reason in Canada. We wish him success in future endeavours.
Carol Parlow MD, FRCPC
Chair, Board of Directors of CFI Canada
Justin Trottier had taken leave of his position as CFI Canada Executive Director to stand as a candidate for the Green Party of Ontario in the upcoming provincial election. Now it looks like that leave has been made permanent. It’s really hard to tell from this message whether the feelings were mutual.
Many volunteers, including myself, have grumbled at some of Trottier’s more controversial positions, but CFI Canada wouldn’t be where it is today without him. After great success with the University of Toronto Secular Alliance, Trottier founded CFI Ontario and pushed it onto the national stage. His determination has forced the much older (both in terms of length of existence and demographics) humanist organizations that they’ll need to step up their games to continue. CFI’s rapid expansion put pressure on many local humanist groups, with some dividing and others folding into new CFI branches.
It’s not clear yet what direction Derek Pert will take CFI Canada over the next few years. I haven’t met him personally yet, but look forward to some new ideas from him.
Give early, give often
Aug 26th
Rumour has it that CFI Canada is doing pretty well on their quest to raise $300 000 by the end of the September. You’ll recall that if they reach that target, an anonymous donor is promising an additional $200 000.
This half-a-million dollars will go a long way to supporting freethought in Canada. CFI will obviously benefit, but even smaller groups will gain notoriety from access to the increased resources of a central organization.
For key cities, those with the donor base to support it, physical venues will be established. Every small meetup will have one central location in their town where 100% of the people through the door will be their target audience.
But there’s still a ways to go in this goal.
So think bigger. A one-time donation of $50 or $100 helps, but contributing $25 or more per month can go a long way to ensuring the sustainability of freethought in Canada. Just think of it this way: if you’d donate $5 at a meeting every week to help cover the costs of the space, why not guarantee that money, giving predictability to the budgets of your favourite organization.
And, as an added bonus, every Canadian resident can claim those donations on their taxes. Everyone wins!
Finally, when Canadian atheist organizations have enough money to operate, I can stop pimping out this blog asking you all for money.
Vancouver Book Clubbing
Jul 24th
Wow, it’s actually been almost an entire year since I last posted about the book club I co-host with my wife Sonia in Vancouver.
It’s been a good year though. We’ve done a book every month
So far we’ve covered:
- Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
- The Physics of Star Trek by Lawrence Krauss
- The Armageddon Factor by Marci McDonald
- The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris
- 36 Arguments for the Existence of God by Rebecca Goldstein
- Elbow Room by Daniel Dennett
- Charlatan by Pope Brock
- Mistakes Were Made by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson
- The Purity Myth by Jessica Valenti
- Three Cups of Tea by Ted Mortenson
- The Atheists Guide to Christmas
- Contact by Carl Sagan
CFI to establish physical centres in all Canadian cities!
Jul 15th
Centre for Inquiry Canada has just announced that it has a donor who is willing to put forward a fifth-of-a-million dollars (Canadian dollars even!) if CFI can raise another $300,000. That would total half-a-million dollars, enough to lease or buy physical locations for each of their centres in Canada.
Even if you’re not the biggest fan of CFI, these physical centres will benefit the entire freethought movement. Local groups, as is the case in right now Toronto, will have a sympathetic landlord who will either rent at a reduced or complimentary rate.
So go and donate now, and again, and get your friends to donate to the Next Big Step campaign.
The deadline is September 30th, so there’s not a lot of time to reach this goal.
Don’t click this ad
Jul 13th
Since Google+ isn’t running ads yet, I guess CFI Canada is stuck running its ads on good old Facebook:
The ad takes you to CFI Canada’s page.
Of course I suggest not clicking the ads unless you’ve never heard of CFI Canada before, unless you want to waste a few cents every time you see the ad.
Vancouver atheists get charitable
Jun 22nd
Over the past few weeks, which have been quite busy for me as evidenced by my absence, CFI Vancouver has gotten involved in a couple of really great acts of selflessness (except for the selfish self-promotion reasons).
First, we kicked off our Partners For Life challenge with Canadian Blood Services with a blood drive a couple weekends ago. And while not everyone was eligible to donate (for a variety of reasons), we did manage to donate enough blood to save at least 12 lives!
Then, this past weekend, more members of CFI Vancouver raised funds for our Relay for Life team to raise money for the Canadian Cancer Society. The entire event raised over $188,000, with CFI members raising $1685 between our 11 team members.
Both of these events are the kick-off to much more charitable outreach, with blood drives scheduled for every two months and the Vancouver Pride Parade (with the BC Humanists and CFI Vancouver working together), atheists in Vancouver are proving how good you can be without god.
Credit for both photos goes to Fred Bremmer.
Skeptivism: yay or nay?
Feb 21st
This afternoon Deepak Chopra stopped his woo woo train speaking tour here in Saskatoon to give a seminar on “Healing Transformation and Higher Consciousness.” [I find it really telling that the website for the event describes the afternoon in this way: "Dr. Chopra’s seminar begins at 2:30 pm. The onsite bookstore will be open at 1:30pm. Arrive early for a chance to browse Deepak’s latest titles." -- note the plug for consumerism! Ah, so much for transcendence.]
I’m not a fan of Chopra, though several of my friends are. And while I view most of his claims with rolled-eyes, I don’t see the harm in some of what he says. If reading his books makes you a better person, then more power to ya. But that said, if reading his woo woo causes you to forsake medical treatment for serious physical ailments, then we run into problems.
This afternoon several people from CFI Saskatchewan stood outside in the freezing cold to hand out flyers that questioned the legitimacy of Chopra and his claims. [there's a bit about Saskatoon's response to Chopra on the February 20th broadcast of Global Saskatoon (clip starts about 8:30 in)]
I feel kind of conflicted about this skeptivism (skeptical activism). While I agree with the content of the flyers that were passed out, and would happily discuss this issue with someone, there’s a part of me that doesn’t like the idea of standing in front of the entrance to an event, handing out this kind of material. It feels — dare I say? — evangelical. How is it any different than a bunch of Ray Comfort-esque folks handing out flyers in front of a venue where an atheist/skeptic is speaking? Do people who paid to attend such an event even take this kind of activism seriously?
This isn’t to say that I’m against vocalizing dissent, speaking out against pseudoscience, or talking one-on-one to others about where Chopra goes wrong. I’m just not a fan of this particular approach of skeptivism: blanketing ticketholders with pamphlets the day of a show.
But I’m up for being persuaded that I’m wrong.
[picture taken from this Skeptic North post on Chopra, which you all should read]
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