Solidarity
 L'Arche Haiti : A Reporter-Photographer's Chronicle | | Images of L'Arche
 L'Arche viewed through the eyes of artists and photographers | | A Human Future
 An Interview with Craig Jones of the John Howard Society about our Justice System. | | |
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Punitive or Rehabilitative: What do we want for our Criminal Justice System?
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Craig Jones- The John Howard Society
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News in recent months has alluded to legislative changes and proposed changes to the criminal justice system. We think this is a matter for urgent public debate.
In this issue, Craig Jones’ thought-provoking responses are accompanied by related materials including Harley Eagle’s interesting reflection on Restorative Justice.
Click here to read or download the Summer Issue of A Human Future
A Human Future is a free e-quaterly offered by L'Arche Canada that seeks to contribute to the public conversation about values and the shaping of the social ethos in which we live.
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The Founder of L'Arche Deserves a Nobel Prize for His Work
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He whose deeds exceed his wisdom is like a tree whose branches are few but whose roots are many. Even if all the winds of the world come and blow upon it, they cannot move it from its place.
Jewish Saying
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It has been said that one true measure of civilization is how well we treat the most vulnerable members of our society.
If there's one man who truly understands the importance of kindness, compassion, understanding, and, as we say in Hebrew, "tikun olam," or repairing the world, it's Jean Vanier, the Founder of L'Arche .
By creating L'Arche - a remarkable and unique network of homes where the developmentally disabled live comfortably, together with volunteers and staff - Vanier has given those who are often forgotten and locked away as worthless, the miraculous opportunity to play an important role, by touching others.
Click here to read the full article in The Montreal Gazettte, April 2, 2010
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L'Arche Opens New Homes in Canada
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L'Arche Joliette is welcoming new residents
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L’Arche is about being faithful over many years to the women and men with a disability who have already found a home within L’Arche. We are also committed to opening new programs and expanding others so that more people can find a home and community within L’Arche.
Impact, the bulletin of the L'Arche Canada Foundation highlights how L’Arche is growing.
Nathan Ball, Executive Director
L'Arche Canada Foundation
Click here to download or read our Spring 2010 Impact bulletin.
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Canadian Forces Members Work Magic for L'Arche in Carrefour, Haiti
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Port-au-Prince - February 21, 2010
Over a two-day period this past week, some 40 Canadian soldiers participated in a Joint Task Force charity project at L'Arche Carrefour, one of the two L'Arche communities in Haiti.
Canadian Forces members set up a number of tents, leveled the ground, dug ditches, and brought in food and water. "It was an incredible experience for the soldiers involved, and it really made us feel as though we had made a positive contribution, reinforcing why the Canadian Forces are here," said CF chaplain Guy Belisle.
L'Arche Carrefour is located in Carrefour, the epicenter of the earthquake that devastated Haiti on January 12. The community has 2 homes and a workshop welcoming more than 30 people living with an intellectual disability, and operates a school attended by more than 15 children affected by intellectual disabilities. Many neighbours have sought refuge in this L'Arche community since the unfolding of these tragic events.
If you wish to make a gesture of solidarity specifically in support of Haitians living with intellectual disabilities who have been affected by this catastrophe, please make your donation through the L'Arche Canada Foundation website.
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David and Goliath: Walker Brown Chosen Over Trudeau, Levesque, and Hearst
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After winning the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction last month, yesterday The Boy in the Moon was awarded the 2010 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction.
In contrast to the three other prize finalists, all portraits of famous men, Ian Brown's book tells the story of his son. Walker Brown is a 13-year-old boy living with severe intellectual and physical disabilities, whose life inspired his father's search for meaning. Walker Brown's story, difficult and somber though it is, apparently touched the members of the jury more profoundly than did those of Pierre-Elliott Trudeau, Rene Levesque, and American press magnate William Randolph Hearst.
The book also presents L'Arche in an original way, as Ian Brown's research led him to visit L'Arche Montreal and Jean Vanier at L'Arche Trosly. Brown writes that L'Arche is the model, par excellence, for those who are most vulnerable, precisely because it is utopian - society in general not being ready for such an ideal.
The winter issue of A Human Future features an interview with Ian Brown. Read A Human Future... The Boy in the Moon is also the subject of a two-part documentary aired on the CBC’s “The National” this week. Watch The National special presentation on the Boy in the Moon
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When a catastrophe strikes,
people living with intellectual disabilities
are the first to be affected.
Jean Vanier
L'Arche Canada asks each and every one to make a gesture of solidarity specifically in support of Haitians living with intellectual disabilities who have been affected by this latest catastrophe.
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| For 16 months, The Globe and Mail's Ian Brown has corresponded with Jean Vanier, the founder of L'Arche This is their final exchange |
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From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Published on Saturday, Jan. 02, 2010 12:21PM EST
‘There is a beginning and an end to all things'
Dear Jean,
It has been months since I last wrote to you: The time seems to have evaporated in a rush of all-too-forgettable duties. Now, that busyness has come to a standstill and winter is arriving, slowing everything down and shelving my ambitions.
But perhaps I've also put off this letter because it looks like it will be our last exchange for a while, at least in public. I always feel a little nervous about stopping a communication: The time comes soon enough when we can't share our thoughts at all, so it always seems a little … profligate, to stop writing unless it is absolutely necessary.
I suppose silence always makes me think of solitude, and solitude makes me think of isolation – the loneliness of my son Walker, mute and isolated, and the spectre the intellectually disabled always bring to the surface.
Read Ian Brown Full Letter and Jean Vanier Answer in the Globe and Mail >>>
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Toward a Social Copenhagen :
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As the Copenhagen Summit proceeds, L’Arche, the PLAN Institute, and L’Agora (the Encyclopédie l’Agora) are launching a new, bilingual website focussing on the theme of belonging.
All too often, the social dimension of the deterioration of our environment is ignored. It should instead shine a spotlight on the importance of the ties of belonging to the resolution of the crisis currently shaking the planet.
At issue here are the questions of belonging to the earth and belonging to others – each one a reality characterized by extreme vulnerability. How can the social and community sectors respond to this challenge? And what contribution do the most vulnerable of people have to make?
According to Nathan Ball, Director of the L’Arche Canada Foundation, Al Etmanski, Director of the PLAN Institute, and Jacques Dufresne, philosopher and Editor of the Encyclopédie de l’Agora, the appartenance- belonging.org website stands as an invitation extended to each and every person to participate in a discussion that we cannot do without.
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L'Arche Launches a New Website for the International Day of Persons with Disabilities
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L'Arche launches a new web site for the International Day of Persons with Disabilities
In honour of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, L'Arche Canada is establishing a website celebrating the campaign theme I am inviting you! - an opportunity to hear the voices of core members themselves.
Don't forget to take a look at the site -and, especially, to watch the videos. A great big thank you goes out once again to L'Arche Haiti, El Arca del Argentina, L'Arche France, and to the team of L'Arche Cape Breton, our collaborators on this project.
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What's the Connection Between Canadian University Football and L'Arche?
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If you're a fan of Canadian university football, the Vanier Cup is no doubt familiar to you. An article in the November 26th edition of the National Post highlights the importance of this competition and of the man its name honours.
From the National Post:
"Not far from the Vanier Cup game is the tomb of the man after whom the national football championship is named - the late Georges Philias Vanier, Governor-General of Canada from 1959 until his death in 1967. Like the Grey Cup, Stanley Cup and, latterly, the Clarkson Cup, the Vanier Cup takes its name from a Governor-General, a discreet but distinctive Canadian touch, illustrating the unique role of the Crown in giving expression to our national identity.
"Georges Vanier was a great shaper of that identity, a man whose life is one of the most noble in our history. ..." Read more >>>
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Prophets of Peace Now Curriculum across Ontario Catholic School Boards
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Deiren Masterson, a past L'Arche assistant has successfully marketed two of his L'Arche videos within the Catholic School Board. The 25-minute compilation explores how the weakest, most vulnerable members of society offer a credible means to peace in a troubled world.
Both films have enjoyed national and international broadcast, festival awards, and were screened during the World Youth Day festivals in Canada and Germany. They are part of course material for the Diploma in Assisted Living: Human Care & Community at St. Francis Xavier University.
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L'Arche Haiti : A Reporter-Photographer's Chronicle
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JBG or Jonathan Boulet-Groulx is a young reporter-photographer whose ambition is to photograph and document the difficult conditions in which men, women, and children living with intellectual disabilities find themselves in countries affected by environmental catastrophes, war, or tremendous poverty.
Having now experienced his photographs of L'Arche in Haiti, you can follow Jonathan's work every week through his blog, "Mwen pas fou, Chronicles of a Young Reporter-Photographer in L'Arche Haiti."
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Learning from Millenial Youth : An Interview with James Penner
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"Millennial youth" is a sociological term for young people born in the 80s and 90s and coming into their adult years now, in this new millennium. James Penner discusses his learning from his undergraduate students and the results of Project Teen Canada 2008, the final stage in a unique series of national, bilingual research projects examining the values, attitudes, beliefs, behaviour, and expectations of Canadian teenagers. More responsible, conservative, materialistic, more concerned about the future and more steeped in the media than previous generations, this "generation Y" faces different challenges.
James Penner, veteran youth specialist, is Associate Director of Dr. Reginald Bibby's "Project Teen Canada 2008."
A Human Future is a 4-page e- quarterly published by L'Arche Canada that seeks to contribute to the public conversation about values and the shaping of the social ethos in which we live. Click here to learn more ...
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Tangled Webs in L'Arche Homefires
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Barbara Robinson has just published a book about her daughter, Sharon, who is one of the core members of Wolfville L'Arche Homefires.
The book, entitled Tangled Webs, tells the story from a mother's viewpoint of Sharon's journey from her birth in Toronto to independence from her birth family and full involvement in her new home in L'Arche at Emmaus House. way. It is a 30 years chronicle of how love, care, wisdom, bureaucracy, bigotry and prejudice all weave tangled webs through which Sharon emerges successfully as a mature woman.
"Tangled Webs" portrays the joys and difficulties encountered in nurturing, supporting and encouraging a person who has a mental challenge to be fulfilled and recognised as one who has much to contribute to our society. It is a story of love, freely given and received.
The book is available through Wolfville L'Arche Homefire's shop Applewicks. Copies can also be obtained through amazon.ca by searching for "Tangled Webs Robinson". An eBook version can be downloaded from lulu.com.
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Diploma in Assisted Living: Human Care and Community Fall courses begin on September 14th
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This program is for individuals with experience working or living with people who have a developmental disability.
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The Diploma in Assisted Living: Human Care and Community is a professional/personal development opportunity designed by St. Francis Xavier University in collaboration with L’Arche Canada and other experts in the field of developmental disability.
The StFX program approach has, as a guiding principal, Jean Vanier’s concept of people with a developmental disability within community.
The program incorporates both theoretical and values-based approaches to the needs of persons with a developmental disability, emphasizing building community, fostering spirituality and celebrating individual giftedness.
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New Jean Vanier Video Online
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Marc Fèvre d'Arcier and Jean Vanier
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In the summer of 2007 Jean Vanier gave a wonderful talk in Toronto on "healing and inner liberation" which was sponsored by the Ontario Psychotherapy and Counseling Program (OPC).
The OPC has just posted to its website a video of Jean Vanier's talk and a related interview given the following day. Click on the links below to listen to Jean Vanier :
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L'Arche needs a hand up to help out its clients
Foundation hopes to raise $1.5M a year to fund its programs both here and in Latin America
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by Ramon Gonzalez
Western Catholic Reporter, June 22nd, 2009
SHERWOOD PARK - L'Arche is committed to helping create an open, inclusive and compassionate Canadian society where every person is valued and makes a contribution.
So if you want to help build such a society you should support the work of L'Arche and the vision of its founder - Jean Vanier - says Grant Kaminski, a national L'Arche leader based in Sherwood Park. L'Arche Canada has been responding to the needs of people with disabilities for close to 40 years.
Priorities Right
Kaminski says during that time, L'Arche has learned it is people with disabilities who can help us realize what's truly important in life - relationships, patience, forgiveness, love, acceptance, celebration and joy.
"People with intellectual disabilities help us get our priorities right."
Kaminski, a social worker and father of three, is the recently appointed director of development for the L'Arche Foundation, an institution created six years ago to support and extend the work of Vanier and L'Arche in Canada.
Read the full article in the Western Catholic Reporter >>>
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I Would Have My Baby Nevertheless ...
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A Quebec newspaper, L'Écho Abitibien, has published a lovely story about Sina Kronhardt, inspired by her relationship with André Gauthier, a core member of L'Arche Amos.
Sina is one of a group of 47 German assistants spending a year, living an experience that is both unique and profoundly human, in one of 28 L'Arche communities across Canada.
"I Would Have My Baby Nevertheless"
Martin Guindon
General - Published June 19, 2009, L'Écho Abitibien
Sina Kronhardt, a German assistant who, for the past nine months has shared a home in L’Arche Amos with five people living with an intellectual disability, says that she would carry her baby to term even if she knew the baby would be handicapped.
“I think that people may have the right to screening tests, but I don’t believe that it is necessary to do them for all women. Certainly, all parents dream of having a healthy baby. But now that I have come to know André (Gauthier), even if I learned that there was one chance in a hundred or even a thousand, I would see my pregnancy through without hesitating,” she affirmed.
She talks about André Gauthier, a core member at L’Arche who has Down’s Syndrome. André communicates by signing because he is deaf and mute. “He is very open; he doesn’t hide his emotions. He is intelligent. He has learned sign language. He is able to do just about everything anyone else can do, if you show him how. And he makes people happy. He is content simply to have your attention. He is 46 years old, but he plays like a child of five. We laugh with him. And if you know him - even a little - you don’t even need signs to understand him,” Sina insists. Twenty years old, Sina has found that people with disabilities are more warmly welcomed in Quebec than in Germany.
Click here to read the entire article as it originally appeared in French in L'Écho Abitibien
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| Canada's first L'Arche member spread the word |
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| Bill Van Buren |
He survived an impoverished youth and muscular dystrophy to live a full life
RON CSILLAG
Special to The Globe and Mail
May 9, 2009
Bill Van Buren was an unlikely pioneer.
Born into Dickensian conditions, he was institutionalized at 10 and branded mentally retarded, as his condition was then termed.
In his early years, he was like a wraith, directionless and hollow. "He rarely laughed. He rarely cried," said Carl MacMillan, a long-time friend.
But he became a wisecracking, artistic, sociable, globe-trotting ambassador for L'Arche, the renowned facility of which he was the first member in North America. Read more in The Globe and Mail.
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| Founders of L’Arche Homefires Honoured |
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| Jeff and Debra Moore |
On Friday, May 1, the Nova Scotia Agricultural College (NSAC) bestowed Honorary Doctor of Laws degrees upon Jeff and Debra Moore.
The Moores, who founded L’Arche Homefires in 1983, are today recognized as pioneers of the world-wide “fair trade” movement. In 1996, they founded the Just Us! Coffee Roasters Co-Op, Canada’s first Fair Trade coffee roaster. Just Us! is now one of Canada’s most successful worker-owned businesses based on a firm belief in “people and the planet before profits.”
For more information, read A Human Future
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| Compassionate End- of-Life Care for Adults with Developmental Disabilities |
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| For more information or resources about Aging, Dying and Grieving, click here |
The topics of aging, dying and grieving are very important ones for us at L'Arche and for our society as a whole.
We want to continue to provide care that is person-centered, of high quality, builds on strengths and focuses on relationships throughout all of people's lives.
L'Arche Toronto and The deVeber Institute hosted in January an evening of talks and discussion about palliative care and ethical concerns at end-of-life.
The DVD of the event is now available from The deVeber Institute for only $20. To order it: contact Elaine Zettel at The deVeber Institute at: bioethics@deveber.org or 416-256- 0555 .
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| Men of Letters, Jean Vanier and Ian Brown |
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Part 5 - A Man For All Seasons
Read the fifth instalment in a continuing correspondence between Jean Vanier, the founder of L'Arche, and Globe and Mail writer Ian Brown.
The Vanier Letters Part 5 - A Man for all Seasons discuss the ravages of age - and what happens afterward with permission from The Globe and Mail
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| Quebec speaks out |
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The eight L’Arche communities of Quebec responded together to an offi cial report to the Minister of Health and Social Services, proposing early screening for Down syndrome.
The L’Arche Quebec statement, which was widely distributed among the large number of non-profit organizations in Quebec, contextualizes the discussion with a tribute to Peter Lincoln, member of L’Arche Montreal who passed away recently.
Read more ...
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| New Secondary School Educational Materials for Civics, Guidance, Religion, Philosophy, French |
 L'Arche offers high quality supplementary course materials designed to inspire young people with a vision of a world where everyone belongs and can make a contribution.
This is the vision of Jean Vanier--a vision of which L'Arche is one manifestation. "You can choose...You can do something beautiful with your lives" Vanier tells today's youth.
L'Arche materials are written by professional educators and have received excellent evaluations from public, private and Catholic school teachers and principals and from ministry officials.
Dow nload PDF pamphlet or consult our Education section
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| Free e-letters from Jean Vanier and L'Arche |
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We invite you to subscribe to a brief daily thought from the writings of Jean Vanier, or to a short inspirational weekly L’Arche e-story, or to “A Human Future,” our e-quarterly thought sheet. Your email address is kept private and we provide Safe Unsubscribe
Click here to subscribe
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| | What is L'Arche ? | |
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Letter from the Director of the L'Arche Canada Foundation
Today our people in Haiti are struggling
In 1976 the Haitian ambassador to Canada asked Jean Vanier if he would start L’Arche in
Haiti. For over 30 years L’Arche has been active in Haiti providing homes, communities and
other supports to people with intellectual disabilities.. Read more ...
L’Arche Canada is proud to join Education Alberta in announcing the launch of a new Online high school Social Studies Resource on Jean Vanier
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The resource, titled “Jean Vanier: A Canadian Inspiring the World”, gives ready access to some of the best thinking of this acclaimed social visionary, humanitarian and founder of the L’Arche movement. “We are thrilled to make this material available,” says Alberta Education’s Curriculum Manager, Karen LaRone. The resource was developed by the Program Development and Standards Division, Alberta Education and is delivered via the LearnAlberta.ca Web site.
Read more | Dowload press release |
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| L'Arche is a place of belonging |
 L'Arche is a place of belonging for people living with a disability and those who share life with them. Since 1964, men and women of good will, with and without intellectual disability, are commiting to each other in L'Arche to break down the barriers of fears that separate us and to create new places of belonging where everyone is important and can contribute.
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| Live an experience that is out of the ordinary |
 Are you creative, responsible, open? We invite you to live and work with people with an intellectual disability. More than a job, we offer you an experience, an adventure, an apprenticeship that will benefit you for the rest of your life. Discover that every human life, limited though it may be, is worth celebrating.
Listen to what our assistants are saying
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| L'Arche is an international movement |
Everywhere around the world where L'Arche exists, men and women who live with an intellectual disability share a common culture of the heart and, in their own way, constitute one people.
Although their intellectual capacities may be limited, these men and women, indifferent to success, competition or performance have developed qualities of the heart that can lead us to a renewed understanding of our fundamental and common humanity.
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| Mwen pa fou - L'Arche Haiti A Photographer-Reporter`s Chronicle |
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 As Jonathan tries to travel back to Port-au-Prince to prepare the photo exhibit, he meets unexpected obstacles at the airport. Read his latest post : Maria, Peter, Jacques and Hélène.
At the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crimes committed, suffered, and witnessed, that good and not evil will be done to him. It is this above all that is sacred in every human being.
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| | Daily thought | Impatience
 We are all so impatient. We want everything and we want it now! We want happiness, fulfilment and life. It is normal to want such things. But we have to learn to respect the rhythm of our being.... |
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