October. With the change of seasons, some notable dates: My penchant for making connections can border on the unlikely, however, I wonder if you can also see some ties between the beauty of Autumn’s beginning changes and what’s being celebrated on several dates in October. A few:
- Oct 1st – National Seniors Day in Canada. This is a day to personally acknowledge the contributions of an older person to your families, communities or society.
- Oct. 11th – the International Day of the Girl Child celebrates the achievements of young women worldwide and asks us all to work towards mitigating the additional challenges these young women face because of gender.
- Oct. 14th – Thanksgiving – on behalf of the executive, we wish you and yours another wonderful celebration this year.
- Oct. 18th – Persons Day in Canada. The Famous Five (I can’t write their names without getting goosebumps: Emily Murphy, Nellie McClung, Louise McKinney, Irene Parlby and Henrietta Muir Edwards) lost a hard-fought legal challenge when the Supreme Court of Canada shamefully decided in 1927 that the word “person” did not include women. These valiant women appealed to the Privy Council of Great Britain in London and on October 18, 1929, decisively the word “person” would include females. Much more than semantics, this decision paved the way for women to participate fully in society. Please take some time to appreciate women, past and present, whose work improves the lives of all women and girls in Canada.
- Oct. 31st – with its 1,000-year-old origin as part of a Celtic festival, this day for trick-or-treating fun once asked that we turn our minds to those we’ve lost. Will you be able to resist “being someone else” for a few hours this Hallowe’en or can you contain yourself to just providing joy to the children this year?
October is Canadian Women’s History Month, Global Diversity Awareness Month, and Canadian Cancer Society’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month. From cancer.ca, we know that almost 28,000 Canadians are diagnosed each year with breast cancer and thousands live with disease. I am one of those (2012). To provide encouragement to the several hundred other women competing and to many more supporters, I wore the bubble-gum pink “cancer survivor” cap during my first triathlon a couple months ago.
Apologies Due: On a different note, were you able to attend last month’s spectacular meeting? The smart work of several committees and the draw of the brilliant women on the panel must have created a record-breaker for both club attendance and number of guests. A business meeting had been planned after the break where excited conversations captivated many. I take full responsibility for calling an early end to the agenda and apologize to those who remained for the reports and announcements, especially the new members waiting to be introduced and those with prepared reports. Those items have been deferred to the October meeting and I have learned to set a timer! Best to get one of those right away, for this month’s speaker will also capture your attention.