Hello all,
I'm sure you all
understand, but I feel obliged to apologize on the lateness of this post once
again. I hate being kept in the dark with things such as this, so I understand
your situation. I started writing this post nearly two weeks ago - but the
reason I didn't finish it until now is because it has been two crazy weeks. Saskatechwan has been quite the province, and has also managed to destroy every stereotype I've ever had about it. Yup, it's not even
that flat. But one thing that is straight in this province is its unchanging
pro-life stance. I think it is safe to say (since I am from Ontario, and I
think we can all agree on how Quebec stacks up) that Saskatechwan is this great
country's most pro-life province. Being from the East, this walk has really
helped to dispel some stereotypes that us Easterners typically have of Western
Canada. Perhaps the most surprising is that, through our observations, it seems
that SK takes top baby-defender status over Alberta. While Albertans are
certainly economically conservative peoples (though even that seems to be
increasingly questionable), they are not the torch-bearing social right-wingers
I once took them to be. Or at least they aren't anymore. I can't help but feel,
with the growing oil economy and prosperity of the West, that maybe Alberta is
trying to prove itself as the yuppies of the West…Calgary as the new Toronto,
so to speak. I'm probably offending quite a few Albertans here, so I'll stop.
We still love you Alberta, and the pro-life community in places like Edmonton
was phenomenal. Drumheller is pretty cool too…
Anyhow,
Saskatechewan. The pro-life community in Saskatechewan has been too good to us,
particularly in the (likely) hundreds of burgers and other meals that have been
cooked up for us in Saskatoon, Moose Jaw, Davidson, Regina, and last night,
Redvers. I'd love to thank everyone by name who put these awesome events on,
but for sake of brevity, I'll cover the highlights. In Moose Jaw, the pro-life
community gave us a generous donation, and threw on a great event in which we
were joined by a local Moose Jaw MLA, Warren Michelson, who is pro-life, and
brought the local media to cover our walk. [Check the article here: http://www.mjtimes.sk.ca/Local/News/2012-06-20/article-3012689/Young-abortion-opponents-stop-in-Moose-Jaw-on-cross-Canada-walk/1
] In Davidson, we were given a huge banner by the pro-life community to put on
the back of our RV. They have had these banners in past years so we were all
elated to have one of our very own for our walk. Once we wash the three
inch-thick prairie dust and dirt off the back of our RV, we'll be throwing the
banner on. I'll try and post a photo as soon as it's on.
Redvers was a
special experience for us. It's just a tiny town in SK near the border with
Manitoba, but the pro-life community in this town felt like our biggest welcome
yet. About 15 youth showed up with some parents, and after sharing food and
chatting with them, we had about a 6 km walk through town with them. It was a
great experience, and so awesome for us to see the youth who look up to us. For
us to meet some young pro-lifers was also encouraging to us. Not only did these
young people walk with us, but they had even raised money for us at a freezie
sale at one of their schools, raising over $200. One of them had even written a
song for us on piano, which she performed for us. You guys were amazing! I wish
we could have these kids along for the whole way - we had a ton of fun!
Right now, we are
getting close to the Manitoba border, and will be in Winnipeg next weekend. It
will be our last city-stop before the way-too-large Ontario, where we will be heading towards Thunder Bay. We will be sorry to see one of our walkers, Cesar, leave in Winnipeg as he has other commitments to attend to, including going to work with a religious community in Belgium. We'll miss you Cesar!
I'll end this post
with a little insight I had the other day when I was walking with one of our
team members, Becky. We were thinking about how many steps we must take in a
single shift, and we decided to figure out how many we take, roughly, in our
summer of walking. We concluded it was around 2-2.5 million steps for each
walker…obviously, a huge number! Thinking of large numbers, I decided after to
look up the number of abortions in the US per year. This was also huge: 1.37
million - per year. To put it into perspective, this means that for close to
every second step we take on the walk, a child is aborted in the US. This
really and truly shocked me, but it also gave me encouragement as to why I am
spending this crazy summer on this crazy walk. It is sometimes easy to want to
just want to skip out on a PR event, or sleep through the knock on the window
calling your turn for night shift. But we're doing this for something greater.
And anything that can be done to stop this genocide is worth the sacrifice.
Lastly - we like our
followers to know that we make sure to unwind from time to time. Also, the
craziness of the night shift schedule, and accompanying lack of sleep, often
leads to some pretty interesting, but hilarious scenarios. Here's one of them.
God bless,
Pat Wilson
