General Meeting – Sunday, October 20, 2 PM | In-person | Daralynn Wei, Orderly Affairs

Getting your affairs in Order

Many people find conversations about getting our affairs in order and advance care planning difficult. Join Daralynn Wei, owner and operator of Orderly Affairs, as she presents her approach to this overwhelming subject matter and shares some important facts along the way.

Orderly Affairs owner and operator, Daralynn Wei has worked in an administrative capacity with public service in Canada and overseas over a period of 30 years. In 2020, she retired from the BC government to take on the challenge of managing her own business and helping people get their affairs in order. She is a planner extraordinaire and takes great satisfaction from simplifying what can be very daunting and complex tasks for British Columbians. All Orderly Affairs services are based on requirements specific to B.C.

Film Screening | Twice Colonized | Saturday, March 9, 2:00 PM | Vic Theatre

To honour International Women’s Day, the Canadian Federation of University
Women (CFUW) Victoria Chapter is presenting a screening of the powerful
film Twice Colonized at the Vic Theatre, at 2:00 p.m. Saturday, March 9, 2024.
This event is open to members, their friends and family, and community
members. Admission by donation.

A film by Lin Alluna, Twice Colonized features renowned Inuit lawyer Aaju
Peter, who has led a lifelong fight for the rights of her people. But while
launching an effort to establish an Indigenous forum at the European Union,
Aaju finds herself facing a difficult, personal journey to mend her own wounds
after the unexpected passing of her son.

General Meeting – Sunday, April 21, 2:00 PM | In-person | Resolutions | Dr. Lauryn Oates, Executive Director, Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan

The Right to Learn -- Why Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan, and its Consequences, Should Matter to All of Us

Lauryn will give a brief overview of the current situation in Afghanistan and its impact on the rights of women and girls, followed by information about how CW4WAfghan has responded through its program delivering education to those to whom it's denied.

General Meeting – Sunday, March 17, 2:00 PM | In-person | Speaker, Dr. Claudia Malacrida, Professor of Sociology Emerita, University of Lethbridge

Biography

Claudia Malacrida is an Emeritus Professor and Board of Governors Research Chair at the University of Lethbridge. She is the author of several books on disability, health and the body, including Mourning the Dreams: Miscarriage, Stillbirth and Early Infant Death (Left Coast Press), Sociology of the Body: a Reader (Oxford University Press), Cold Comfort: Mothers, Professionals and ADHD (University of Toronto Press), and A Special Hell: Institutional Life in Alberta’s Eugenic Years (University of Toronto Press).

Institutional Life and Disabled Children Canada – Survivors’ Stories

Drawing on rare interviews with former inmates and workers, institutional records, and governmental archives, Claudia Malacrida illuminates the dark history of the treatment of “mentally defective” children and adults in twentieth-century Alberta. Focusing on the Michener Centre in Red Deer, one of the last such facilities to close in Canada, A Special Hell is a sobering account of the connection between institutionalization and eugenics.

Malacrida explains how isolating the Michener Centre’s residents from their communities served as a form of passive eugenics that complemented the active eugenics program of the Alberta Eugenics Board. Instead of receiving an education, inmates worked for little or no pay – sometimes in homes and businesses in Red Deer – under the guise of vocational rehabilitation. The success of this model resulted in huge institutional growth, chronic crowding, and terrible living conditions that included both routine and extraordinary abuse.