Welcome to the Society of Edmonton Atheists’ blog. If this is your first time visiting, click “Continue Reading” to get a quick summary of what’s here.
The Society of Edmonton Atheists are proud to be founding sponsors of the AB Secular Conference. The conference location varies each year as it travels the province. You can follow them on facebook or check out their website for the latest news.
We have decided to join in with Westwood Unitarians book club during the months that it runs. The events have already been listed for Nov, Jan, Feb, and March, so you can check out their upcoming book list. April will be added once a book title for that month has been chosen.
In the months they do not have a book club, we will continue with ours on the last Sunday of the month at Second Cup as per usual (with exception of December).
The FreeThinker Book club meets in the basement of the Westwood Unitarian Church at 7:00 PM on the last Wednesday of the month from Oct-March. The format varies but typically begins with a round table check-in and first reactions to the book. This is followed by a free ranging discussion, triggered by questions from other members.
All are welcome – atheists, humanists, agnostics, and theists and of course ‘free thinkers!!
Here are the shifts and the location of the Pride Booth. We are in booth 604.
Come stop by and see us!
Friday night set up, 7pm – 9pm : Karen
June 9th, Saturday Pride!
10am – 11:00 Randy
10am – 1:00 Tamara
11am – 1:00 Karen
1:00 – 2:00 Martin
1:00 – 2:00 Tom
1:45 – 3:45 Marion
2:00 – 4:00 Gary
2:00 – 3:30 Eric
3:45 – 4:45 Ashley
3:00 – 5:00 Doreen
4:00 – 6:00 Mark
4:30 – teardown Karen
Thanks all who made it out to the Food Bank volunteer event! The attendance was fantastic and we really did some good work. These volunteer events are a good way to give back and something we will do again.
-Mark (executive board member)
Join us to celebrate LGBTQ+ rights in Canada, we will be at a booth in Stratcona Park the entire day June 9th.
If you’d like to volunteer, then please fill out this google form with your availability, and we’ll schedule you for a shift.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeJClgK9I-ktvnYJGVEhJ-QxLGVrwNcCVnwVsSBuf0KHPndDQ/viewform
A big thank you to Paulogia for skyping with us for our latest round table event, we had a great time talking about everything from Ken Ham, the Alberta Bible Quiz, Alberta Homeschooling to George Lucas and Star Wars!
If you want to check out Paul’s youtube channel you can find him here: Paulogia on Youtube!
Due to some recent facebook privacy issues, events are no longer linking to our page via our widget. We’ve been told they are trying to find a work-around, but in the meanwhile we’ll be looking at other options for our events calendar on our website.
For now, here are the most recent upcoming events:
April 29th, 9:00am – Breakfast at Bonnie Doon Mall Albert’s Family Restaurant
May 1st, 7:oopm – Round Table event, Edmonton Health Clinic Academy, Room 1-121. We will be voting on our bylaws that were amended at the AGM from 7:00 until 7:15pm, and then skyping with Paulogia from Calgary about his vlogcast.
May 1st, 9:15pm – Pub Night at Sherlock Holmes on Campus.
Thanks to everyone who came out to our Annual General Meeting and helped shape the next year for our Society. We are adding a quarterly volunteer event at the Food Bank, we will be having a 10 year anniversary party/1 year memorial for Michael Vester this year, and look forward to continuing to share events with other local like minded groups, including the Secular Humanists, Secular Ethics group in Stony Plain, and the Unitarian Churches in the city. We also voted to include a low-income membership, on a case by case basis. This will be added to our website soon.
A few bylaw concerns came up during the meeting, which we were too late to vote on that night as members need prior notice, however, we did work on the re-wording and will have an General Meeting prior to the next round table event in May to quickly vote on these so they can be submitted this year with our filing. This would allow us to implement them for next April’s AGM.
Our current bylaws allow us to have one person sit as Treasurer and Secretary, which we wanted to update. You can find the proposed changes in red here: 2018-BYLAWS PROPOSED CHANGES (changes include adding line 34, removing line 37, updating line 43 and adding a word to line 46.)
A big thank you to our previous board members and congratulations to your new 2018-2019 board!
In the spring of 2015 my son was enrolled at Sir George Simpson school in St. Albert, and we had an email message sent to all parents about sex education classes that would be offered. At the time, I was already aware of the issues with the Pregnancy Care Centre providing abstinence-only based sex ed classes, due to the stories out of Edmonton, where they were banned from presenting. I immediately contacted the Principal of the school to express my concerns and to withdraw my consent from my son participating. I made it quite clear that I was not withdrawing consent because I was not willing to allow him a proper sex education, but rather that this was NOT a proper sex education and that instead I would be teaching him at home.
Karen Lumley Kerr
Running for President
SEA Board history:
Vice President April 2013 – April 2014
President April 2014 – April 2018
Unfortunately, we didn’t get our goal of 20 committed SEA members signed up for marching in the parade by the deadline, however, we did get enough to man the booth for the day. So, if you volunteered to help with the booth we’ll be in touch once our application is approved with more news on shifts you can sign up for.
If you will really miss marching, the Unitarian Church has extended an invitation to march alongside with them (they have an atheist community within their congregation). Just let us know and we’ll pass on your info to them for their waiver forms.