COCHRANE— After a year of no activity due to COVID-19, the Cochrane Ideas Group is ready to get back to its regular discussions on Friday (April 9), at 7 p.m. via Zoom.
The group regularly discusses topics relating to politics, social issues, religion, creativity, environmentalism and more.
Board member Leslie Davies said the year-long hiatus was mostly due to the format in which discussions occur.
“It’s a group that meets, anyone is welcome whatever the age, and we just love the exchange of ideas,” Davies said. “Generally, the dynamism and the energy of that thought exchange comes from an in-person gathering.”
She said the group was working behind the scenes to reconvene the meetings over the past year, hoping for the opportunity to resume gathering in person, but has come to the conclusion that it might not be possible and has decided to conduct virtual meetings instead.
“We just kept hoping for a reopening, COVID would settle down and we could have a reopening and continue to gather in person because we weren’t wanting to go online as the rest of the world has done,” she said. “COVID is not going away, we’re not going to be given permission to have in-person gatherings any time soon, it appears, and meanwhile it’s been a year since we shut down. We need to open this avenue of thought exchange and discussion up again so we can be ready for when we do get permission to have an in-person gathering.”
The topic of Friday’s meeting was inspired by the theme of International Women’s Day, which was “Choose to Challenge,” Davies said, which posed the question to women everywhere “how have you challenged the world?”
“We have gathered six accomplished women from the Cochrane area and they are going to speak about how they have challenged the world,” she said. “We wanted to do something engaging for our first-ever Zoom meeting, and always a hundred questions come up about this.”
Speakers for the long-awaited event include Pat Verge, a writer and editor who has written extensively on reconciliation; Heather Kerr, a well-traveled retired operating room nurse and musician; Nadine Eichinger, a physical therapist who holds a position with the Seniors for Kids non-profit society; May Cummings, an Iran-born teacher who came to Canada by way of Sweden, Cummings helped design the curriculum of Grade 12 World Religions and Global Citizenship courses in Saskatoon, and also holds a position on the Calgary Interfaith Council; Lynda Cooke, partner and senior municipal engineer at Urban Systems Ltd. in Calgary; and Judie Bopp, the co-founder of Four Worlds International, and director of the Four Worlds Centre for Development Learning.
Each of these six women will be given an opportunity to speak with guests and participate in a question-and-answer period.
The meeting is free for all who are interested, and the information and links to the Zoom meeting can be found online at cochraneideasgroup.ca/.
