The location for our Roundtable meeting on February 3 has been changed. Please help spread the word!
The location is now Corbett Hall on the University of Alberta Campus.
8205-114 street. Rm 326
http://www.campusmap.ualberta.ca/?l=53.51812399999999,-113.52499548612212&z=17&c=&campus=north_campus
We will head to Sherlock Holmes on Campus afterwards (around 9:30), 8519-112 Street
https://www.google.com/maps/
We plan to be back at our usual location for March.
Have we got a contest for you! The Imagine No Religion conference is June 5 – 7th this year in Vancouver with a spectacular line up of guest speakers, including Harriet Hall, Lawrence Krauss, Seth Andrews and Richard Dawkins, just to name a few. You can find the entire speakers list on their website: http://imaginenoreligion.ca/
Enter our contest for your chance to win an all inclusive ticket to the conference ! Please ensure you read all rules and regulations carefully, and although most of skeptics don’t believe in ”good luck” we’ll offer you some anyway.
Good afternoon,
Safe Schools Alberta will be one of the presenters at next week’s Public Consultations on Gay Straight Alliances in Alberta Schools. The public consultations are being held by the Rocky Mountain Civil Liberties Association in both Edmonton (starting at 4:30 PM on January 29th) and Calgary (starting at 5:30 PM on January 27th). Safe Schools Alberta is scheduled to present at the Calgary session.
These important hearings are likely to be watched by both media and politicians, and the public is welcome (RSVP required). We encourage you to consider attending.
Get full details about the Public Consultations >
RSVPs are required in order to attend. Please RSVP to: register@rmcla.ca
You can also encourage your friends to join you by inviting them on Facebook:
Edmonton: https://www.facebook.com/events/637423599700646/
Calgary: https://www.facebook.com/events/1582223628658139/
Thank you! We hope to see you there.
Richard Einarson
Safe Schools Alberta
info@safeschoolsalberta.ca
Time to update you on what your board has been working on for you!
A GOODBYE
We’d like to say goodbye to board member Kerri, who is off travelling the world for a year with her husband. Thanks for all your dedication to the SEA, we’ll certainly miss you! Thanks to everyone that came out last Saturday to send her off.
Continue reading »
In June, E
dmonton Public Library (EPL) was named the 2014 Library of the Year. And it is a pretty awesome organization. The SEA has been holding our monthly Roundtable meetings at the downtown branch since 2009.
You may have looked through the catalogue or shelves at one point and thought that there wasn’t much relating to atheism or leaving religion. Donald, a local atheist and library fan, has been using his monthly allotment of book requests to stock up the shelves with atheist/secular books that he’s interested in.
If you want to see more of these types of books* on Edmonton shelves, there are two easy things you can do to help that happen: Continue reading »
We’ve put together a list of Alberta atheist, agnostic, secular, and freethought groups. If you’re looking for one (or another one) in your area, there’s a growing selection.
http://www.edmontonatheists.ca/atheism-f-a-q/alberta-groups/
It’s December. Christmas decorations in stores have been up for 8 weeks already, you may be wishing you could target an EMP at speakers playing carols, and the annual charity season is in full swing. Salvation Army kettles are in the malls, and there are billboards up explaining that a goat is more than just a goat.
So, how do you decide which charities are worth giving to? Continue reading »
Diversity (gender and racial) in speakers at atheist conferences has increased from 2003 to 2014, according to a paper written by Ian Bushfield and Chris Hassall.
Hassall, C and Bushfield, I 2014. Increasing Diversity in Emerging Non-religious Communities.Secularism and Nonreligion 3:7, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/snr.as
This is good to hear, and certainly follows my own impressions of the growth in the SEA’s membership. Back when we were getting organized in 2007 (which Ian had a large hand in) the group was overwhelmingly white males. Now, our Board of Directors is evenly split in terms of gender, and our racial diversity at events has been improving.
The SEA is working with some other Alberta groups for a conference in October 2015, keep your eyes open for details in the coming months.
Former Alberta Education Minister, David King, has put together a summary of why Alberta has a separate school system (both public and Catholic school districts) and whether the system can be changed. (Hint: yes, and other provinces have done it already.)
Does your school suffer from an STD (Standard Teaching of Dogma)? SEA member Kathy Dawson has put together some tips and resources for dealing with religious-based sexual education in your public school.
http://scathinglywrongrightwingnutz.blogspot.ca/2014/11/does-your-school-have-std-standard.html
If you aren’t familiar with Kathy’s current human rights complaint against the Edmonton Public School District, Paula Simons from the Edmonton Journal wrote a column about the topic in July. Edmonton’s Pregnancy Care Centre is explicitly Christ-based, and an affiliate of the Canadian Association of Pregnancy Support Services, whose Core Documents can be found on their website.