Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund celebrates 20 years

The Sudbury LEAF Person’s Day Breakfast, is a very special celebration this year. It’s our 20th Anniversary. For 20 years Sudbury has given financial and moral support to the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund as it works to ensure Canadian Charter Rights for women and minorities. Our LEAF Breakfasts have raised more than $245,000 — money that has enabled LEAF to participate in key cases where Human Rights have been under threat in Canada. Locally, the organization has provided books for students and other members of the public on Charter Rights issues. In this special year we look forward to welcoming Senator Nancy Ruth on Friday, Oct. 23 to celebrate Person’s Day with us.

Person’s Day is the anniversary of that October day in 1929 when the Privy Council of Great Britain declared that Canadian women must be deemed “persons” and therefore allowed to vote. The Women’s Legal and Educational Fund — called LEAF to its many friends — celebrates in every major city in Canada. As usual, our LEAF Breakfast will be dark and early — 7 a.m. — at Laurentian University.

Senator Nancy Ruth has devoted her whole life to seeking justice for women and girls, and it was towards this end that she founded LEAF 24 years ago. A feminist, social activist and philanthropist, she is a business woman and entrepreneur, a two-time candidate in provincial elections who served as interim minister of the Metropolitan United Church in Toronto.

Nancy Ruth was born and grew up in Toronto and pursued Theology studies at Covenant and Emmanuel Colleges in Toronto and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She graduated from York University with a B.A. in Political Science before taking her master’s degree in behavioural science at Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington.

We always ask the Sudbury LEAF Breakfast keynote speaker to speak from the heart. In recent years, Nancy Ruth has had a unique vantage point from which to view the progress and regress of Charter Rights. She will share her thoughts about how the courts, the politicians and the Senate have impacted on Equality Rights at the Person’s Day Breakfast this year.

We are hoping that many business people and professionals will not only attend the breakfast but will support the event and LEAF by adding their names to the long list of sponsors by buying table markers. The many women who have worked to organize the LEAF breakfasts over the years are all warmly invited to join us once more for this very special event.

LEAF is a national, non-profit organization that promotes equality for women and girls through legal action and public education. LEAF has challenged discrimination against women by intervening at court cases on workplace and work issues, family issues, and the disadvantaged women. It has supported Francophone rights, intervened in the “Rape Shield” Law and the Privacy of Personal Records. LEAF reinforced that “No Means No” in 1999, and has been there to help ensure that, in Canada, we have a clear definition of “consent” in criminal law, and that disclosure of therapists’ record are not relevant evidence in sexual assault cases. LEAF is an organization that sponsors interventions on a range of human rights. Many of the decisions LEAF has “won” are being challenged again, and the loss of the Court Challenges Program on which LEAF depended makes even more crucial fund-raising events like the breakfast.

Starting in 1989, the Sudbury LEAF Breakfast is the longest running, most successful fund-raising event. Locally, there are two spin-offs. Some of the funds raised are offered for books, magazine subscriptions and videos dealing with women’s issues at the Greater Sudbury Public Library branches. With the YWCA and Canadian Federation of University Women, LEAF has worked locally to develop the annual “Celebrate Women” event that brings a female author to Sudbury to give a talk and to meet the public. Nancy Ruth joins an impressive list of speakers at the LEAF Breakfast which this year falls on Person’s Day.

Tickets — $30 each — can be picked up at Paris Natural Foods, Black Cat, Helvi’s Flowers, Apollo Restaurant, and at Laurentian University and Cambrian College bookstores. Tables of eight are available by calling Laurie at 969-9447. Those people wishing to sponsor the event with a table marker($150), phone 969-9447 and we will send you the order form. Mark the date: Friday, Oct. 23, dark and early at 7 a.m., at Laurentian University Great Hall. We’ll be done in time for the start of the work day.

Dr. Chris Nash is a local psychologist, freelance writer and broadcaster, is founder of The Positive Parenting Institute.