Week 1

Hi all,

Greetings from Summerland! First of all, I'd like to thank all of you who came out to walk with us on Saturday around Stanley Park. We had a sizeable group come out, and gave great witness to the pro-life cause. We prayed the rosary and walked to Prospect Point and back. Only two Crossroads walkers were able to make it out - Jeremy and I - while the rest of the gang came out near the end of the walk (they had to be picked up at the airport).

We are 5 permanent walkers - Cyril, Greg, Ben, Sarah,and myself - as well as a temporary walker, Jeremy,who is with us until Calgary. Jeremy doesn't know it yet but he is going to walk the whole way... :) We also have a certain Marlon with us for a few days. In the picture above, we are, in order from left to right, me (Etienne), Greg, Sarah, Jeremy, Marlon, Cyril and Ben. As you can plainly see, we are sporting our pro-life shirts. These are the shirts we wear practically24/7 - we are walking billboards.

Since Saturday, we stayed in Vancouver, sleeping at St. Mary's parish, and gave talks at all the local parishes. It was by far the busiest part of the trip thus far! Each person went to their own assigned parish, and would attend all the Saturday and Sunday Masses there. I myself went to Blessed Sacrament, a french parish,since I am the only french-speaker on the trip. We attended Mass, gave a talk at the end of the Mass, went to the back after Mass and handed out stickers and flyers,accepted donations, and also accepted prayer intentions. I was struck by the generosity of people at every church we went to, both in their donations and in their prayers for us.

We left early Monday morning from Stanley Park, and since then we have been walking day and night until Friday evening, when we arrived here at Summerland. We went through Vancouver, Coquitlam, Hope, Princeton and Ossoyoos. Since then, I have had two day shifts, and two night shifts. The night shifts are particularly interesting - going from 10pm at night to 6am in the morning. Along the way I got to experience the generosity of well-intentioned individuals who stopped to give us rides as we walked late at night.

Normally, we sleep at campgroups during the week. However, this weekend we were fortunate to have a host family receive us and feed us. Tonight, we take off again and are going to be making our ways across the Rockies. Who knows what awaits us there!

Anyways, I hope this description gives you the readers a fair impression of what we're all about. As many of you know, there are many ways to spread the pro-life message. On campus at UBC, our pro-life group (Lifeline) uses GAP displays, which use graphic images to show the horrendous truths of abortion. GAP displays are an awesome way to show people what abortion is and to convert hearts and minds to pro-life. This summer, we are taking a different, but I think very good, approach. We are walking along roads and highways with prolife shirts, true, but most importantly, we are praying and sacrificing along the way. We are meant to pray the Rosary many times every day, along with daily Mass, and chaplets of Divine Mercy, morning and evening prayer, and also to sacrifice sleep and aches and fatigue and food, and basically to live this summer for the unborn. We have to follow Mother Teresa's advice and "give till it hurts". There are always more ways to live our lives for love, doing every ordinary thing in an extraordinary way. Hopefully with the unborn as our sole focus this summer, we will be able to do this in an exceptional way. This is why we need other's prayers as well - so that our apostolate may be fruitful.

Anyway, we are going to be leaving soon, so I best be off. I hope the best for all of you and will keep you all in my prayers.

Initial Pro-Life Walk around Stanley Park

Hi all,
This morning I posted my first post that would kick-off this blog, and since then I've received a request for information on the initial pro-life walk around Stanley Park. So I thought it wise to post the initial email I sent out a few months ago to various pro-life groups here (this is also good to read if you want to know more about our organization, called Crossroads):

Hi all,
As the semester is coming to a close and as those last papers/exams are due/coming up, I'm sure your all thinking already about how your going to spend the summer. Well, whether your working or studying, we'd like to invite you out to a college pro-life walk that is taking place on Saturday, May 19, 2007, around Stanley Park. The walk around Stanley Park is open to all, and is an excellent opportunity to bear witness to the pro-life cause in Vancouver. For a group of Canadian college-age students, this walk around Stanley Park is the commencement of a 3-month walk across Canada (sponsored by a group called Crossroads). If you havn't heard of them, don't be surprised - this is the first year that they're doing the walk in Canada (it's existed in the US since 1995). We would like as many people to join us for this first 8 km of our journey, so please come out to bear witness to the pro-life message with your fellow students!

The walk across Stanley Park will follow this schedule:
-optional Mass at 12:10 in Holy Rosary Cathedral, 646 Richards St. Vancouver, BC.
-meet with fellow pro-lifers outside the Cathedral at 12:45. Pack a lunch if you havn't had lunch yet
-at 1:30, after everyone has arrived/eaten, we leave for Stanley Park. For those without cars, we will be taking a 10 minute bus-ride, so bring bus fare! We will take the 19 bus to the Vancouver Rowing Club (the beginning of the seawall path).
-we start the walk at about 2:00pm, and walk, walk, walk for life! (if you have a pro-life shirt, bring it!)
-the walk will actually not go around Stanley Park, as the Northern seawall is still closed due to the windstorm from several months ago. Thus, we will walk all the way to Prospect Point along the Eastern seawall, and then turn back and return to where we started. The whole walk should be about 8 km.
-after having finished the walk, and having given great witness to the pro-life message, we say our goodbyes. The Crossroads group stays in Vancouver that evening and Sunday. They are off to Abbotsford on Monday as their first stop in their walk across Canada.

For more information about Crossroads, please check out the website at www.crossroadswalk.org or email contact@crossroadswalk.org . If you are interested in participating in the program, there is still time to apply.

Hope to see you all there on the 19th, rain or shine.

A Pro-Life Debut

Hi all,
This is entry number one of what I hope to be many more. The purpose of this blog is to update you, my friends, on the walk across Canada that is being done by myself and by a group of other college-age students. In this blog I will tell you guys about things that have happened to us on the road, people that we have met and talked to, and experiences that we have experienced. I will also include reflections on topics related to abortion and on the trip itself. But without much further ado, I think I’ll begin by telling you guys why I am doing this walk and what I hope it will achieve.

This summer I am walking across Canada for life. That is, I am walking across Canada to spread the message that currently in Canada there is a silent minority that is not only being oppressed, but whose lives are actually being taken away from them before they even have the chance to experience life. I am talking of course about the unborn. Currently in Canada there are no laws that restrict abortion procedures – abortions can take place up to nine months of pregnancy. Abortion is also legal in the States (since 1973) and in countless other countries in the world. What is the net effect of this legalized abortion? Since the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision (sic) in 1973 that legalized abortion, approximately 57 million fetuses have been aborted in North America. Also, about 1 billion (that is, 1,000,000,000) fetuses have been aborted world-wide since this time. Some countries have abortion rates higher than 1 in 2 – that is, every second child conceived is aborted. Now what does this all amount to? What do these dizzyingly high numbers mean? Well, it means that more than ever before, the world has declared a war on life. The world has declared war on life because it has decided to attack life where it begins – in the womb. We commonly hear of deceitful arguments in favor of abortion under the guise of words such as “pro-choice”. But to those among us who buy their clamor for “choice” I ask, what is it exactly that these women are choosing? Is abortion an innocent procedure that does nothing more than remove a clump of cells from the womb? Or does abortion effectively destroy a human life in the earliest stages of development? This is the crucial question, which requires an equally crucial answer – that indeed life in the womb is as valuable and sacred as life outside the womb, regardless of its environment, degree of dependency, level of development or size. At a time when the most defenseless in our society are incapable of defending themselves, when those without a voice literally cannot speak for themselves, pro-lifers must come together and fight, as it were, to defend the dignity and value of human life. We cannot be content with simply not believing in abortion, but must (in our case literally) take to the streets and cry out in a loud voice “abortion destroys human life!” We must defend and promote a culture of life in an effort to fight the culture of death, a culture which blurs the line between good and evil until all becomes a dreary gray.

Thus it is in this spirit that I take to the roads and the highways, keeping in mind those immortal words spoken by the great Pope John Paul II: “do not be afraid”. We will not be afraid, equipped as we are with the true conviction that life is worth defending and protecting. We will not be afraid to defend life where it is being attacked and to fight against the forces which seek to rob the unborn of their value and dignity as human beings.

Now, there are only three days left till we are off. For those who haven’t heard: we are starting off with an initial walk around Stanley Park this Saturday, and we invite all who wish to come out and support and walk with us for that initial 8 km. Send me an email at a_etienne_o@yahoo.ca if you are interested and haven’t yet received information on the initial walk. You can also use this email if at any time you’d like to contact me on the road personally. Now, for the sake of brevity, I will end this post here. I hope that you will take something away from these posts over the next 3 months, and that you will be encouraged also to speak out against abortion whenever the occasion arises. God bless.

For life,
Etienne