“Diverse massive” nature of Walk for Life West Coast shown in 7 min. 2014 Video from San Francisco California

Your Videos of the Walk!

Posted on Jan 26, 2014 in 2014 Video, 2014 Walk for Life, Blog

Here’s one from youtube.

Because it lasts for a while you can really get a feeling for the “diverse and massive” nature of the Walk for Life West Coast

19,500: Historic record attendance: National March for Life Ottawa, May 2012: Dunn Media video via Gloria.tv

The tide is turning in the Canadian pro-life movement, with thousands of young people marching for life in the National March for Life, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, as shown in a powerful new Dunn Media video, available at Gloria.tv, which is linked in the comments.

campaignlifecoalition.com

Heather Stilwell by Carolyn Budd-Goertzen: ‘Heather was a great woman’

HEATHER STILWELL, R. I. P.

The City of Surrey buried one of its best-known citizens on Thursday, Heather Stilwell. Heather was the former school board chair and a woman who helped start Pro-Life and was a founder of the Christian Heritage Party. She was instrumental in bringing the Bell Centre for the Arts to Surrey and for sewing hundreds of book bags, with her friends, for elementary children to use for library books. These are only some of her accomplishments in the community arena.

In her personal life she was the wife for 45 years of Bill Stilwell, mother of six children and grandmother of eight.

At her funeral, many of her friends were present. The Premier of B.C. attended, as did MLAs and school board and Surrey city council members. A past premier was also in attendance.

She was a loved and active member of her parish church in Cloverdale for many years. The church was packed, with standing-room only.

There are very few people in a person’s life that you can say, “That person changed my thinking or my life for the better.”

Heather Stillwell did that for me. And I am so glad she did.

I met Heather in 1993 at the time of the federal election. She was running in the South Surrey-South Langley riding for the Christian Heritage Party. I was running against her. Both of us were Christian candidates and I was as comfortable with my views as she was with hers. But they were different views.

When I first met her and heard her speak at our all candidate meetings, I liked her, although feeling somewhat intimidated by her. Heather had a rather firm, matter-of-fact and clear view of everything she believed and stood for. She spoke her truth clearly, unequivocally and showed no sign of having her beliefs being negotiable. She was always cheerful and caring in her approach.

I recall listening to her and thinking, “How can she be so clear in her views, and be so politically incorrect?”

You see, Heather did not give any concern to being politically correct. She cared about being morally and ethically correct. She cared about speaking the truth for God and did not care whether people liked it or not. She was a prophet in our midst. That is why I found her unnerving.

Inevitably, the two questions were raised at our debates that set her apart from the other 11 candidates.

Would you support a change to our national abortion policy, which is essentially abortion on demand? (We are the only nation that allows abortions up to the moment of delivery of a fully developed baby. It is my understanding that the murdering of such babies happens.)

Many candidates simply said no.

Heather gave her clear answer of yes, and why she believed the legal or illegal murder of a baby in the womb of its mother was wrong. It was infanticide and no government on Earth could make laws that would ever make it right. We only had to look at Germany in the 1930s to see this as true. Everything Hitler did was sanctioned by laws that he, and his democratically elected party, passed.

(It is 17 years since that election and we are now aware of governments that practice all sorts of barbarism, under the laws of their country. The Taliban being only one that comes to mind. )

I gave my politically correct response. “I could not have an abortion myself, but I would not judge those who did, and would not impose my views on someone else.” This view embarrasses me today, and I have a sense of horror when I think of it.

That is because of Heather and her words to me later, in private. She asked me if I thought having an abortion was wrong, because it would be killing my baby. I said yes.

Then she asked me how, with that belief, I could think it was OK for anyone to murder their baby, in the one place that should be the safest on Earth, a mother’s womb. As I drove home that night I found myself convicted.

Would I be like those in Germany, when the Nazis came for the Jews, and tell myself it was not my business because I was not a Jew? Am I my brother’s keeper, as the Scriptures tell us? Of course I am responsible for the treatment of the weakest among us. Why did I belong to Amnesty International (which I did at the time) if I did not believe this? Or why did I support World Wildlife Fund, etc., if I did not believe that I had some responsibility for the treatment of others, or our Earth and its creatures.

I was guilty of political correctness. It was a given in Canada that one must be tolerant of everybody else and their beliefs and never say anything that might upset them, even if it was the truth you were speaking. This was what I saw; my tolerance included tolerating evil in our midst. At the time of this conversion in my thinking I had never once had a conversation with any of my friends about this issue. There was only one political party that differed from every other party and that was the Christian Heritage Party. No one ever spoke of the unborn child’s right to life. I was brainwashed into only thinking about the right of the woman to decide.

Heather was a woman of courage. Courage is not the absence of fear, it is facing the fear and doing what is right anyway. John Wayne said, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but getting in the saddle anyway.” Her strength came from standing for what was right, not what was acceptable.

It is an interesting fact that she is known as the school board chair that took our city to the Supreme Court on the issue of exposing children aged five and six to homosexual propaganda. How politically incorrect can anyone be?!

The people of Surrey let their voice be heard when they re-elected her repeatedly because of their “silent majority” view that she was correct! Only cancer could take this woman out of our political scene. What a shame.

Perhaps the Lord felt she had fought for Him long enough, and she was exhausted and needed to rest. We are the losers, and her family most of all. I can only envy all of her loved ones that they knew her and were loved by her so well.

I look at the political scene today and look to see one candidate that comes close to Heather’s standards. I can only say for me that the loss of her, as a light in our midst, brings me sorrow.

Heather was a great woman. Greatness does not always come packaged in a charismatic way. It comes in the form of those who have integrity. Heather was full of integrity, in who she was, in what she believed and in what she said. When she said something she stood by it.

Thank you, Heather, for helping me to see clearly, and changing me as a result.

Thank you to all of the Stilwell family for sharing her with us. Her time given for others was time she did not have for you. I for one am appreciative.