Dispatch from the Road

Throughout my childhood, as is typical, I was encouraged to start thinking about my future.  What were my passions?  What was I good at?  In elementary, we had to draw a picture of the career we thought we might want when we grew up. In high school, we had to do personality tests to give us a better indication of which occupation we were suited to.  It seemed like all our growing up years revolved around what our future would look like.

My dreams stretched across a huge span of potential lines of work.  After years of debating many different options, such as teaching, or dreaming about being a nurse or a veterinarian, even thinking about being a police officer, I think my parents worried that I’d never make up my mind.  And then when my calling came, it was as unexpected to me as it was to them. 

I was in university, taking general studies with the hopes of stumbling upon the perfect career when I was invited by a former leader of the campus pro-life club to join her on a trip to Calgary to witness outside the abortion clinic.  I went, more for the trip itself than for the actual purpose of the trip.  How was I to know that that trip would change me and determine my future?

Rather than me being a witness to the women entering the clinic to kill their offspring, they became a witness to me.  In those brief hours, it became clear to me that in our country, across the street from where I stood, mothers were requesting, or perhaps just allowing, their own babies to be ruthlessly killed.  And in that moment, I knew that I had to do what I could to try and stop it.

The same friend that I accompanied to Calgary, who is now my colleague, Maaike Rosendal, sent me an application form for a crash course in pro-life apologetics and activism, from a group called the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, still unknown to me at that point.  I applied, was accepted, and after the week long session was over, felt convinced that this group was doing exactly what needed to be done.  I spent my summer break from university in commute between my Health Care Aide job in Lethbridge, and activism with CCBR in Calgary. 

By the end of the summer holidays, I cancelled my registration to the classes I had been planning on taking that fall semester, and moved to Calgary to work for CCBR.  My Dad was very opposed to my involvement in the pro-life movement, and told me quite vociferously to get a “real” job.  His daughter, a protestor? Not if he had anything to say about it.  He was especially worried that I was part of a movement which he suspected might have violent tendencies, based on much-publicized examples by the hostile media.  Much as I tried to convince him otherwise, it was not until he was dragged by my Mom to a presentation by Jonathon Van Maren about our strategy, that he changed his mind.  I am very pleased to say that as a result, not only are he and my Mom my biggest supporters, but both of them have also personally participated in our “Choice” Chain project. 

With their support, I made the move to Ontario a year ago to work out of CCBR’s new office, and am now working full-time as the Reproductive “Choice” Campaign (RCC) truck driver.  I have the privilege of exploring the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) from the driver’s seat of the truck.  There is something very humbling about driving in Toronto, whether it is the amount of vehicular traffic that fills up all 18 lanes of highway as you enter the city, or the masses of people filling up sidewalks and crosswalks in the downtown.  It is such a large task that we have endeavoured to take upon us to ensure that each of these people hears and sees just what it is that abortion does to the pre-born child. 

Being pro-life does not just mean merely having a belief that abortion is wrong, but it means actively standing against the culture of death which is so rampant in our society today.  Not everyone can be on the front lines, but everyone has a responsibility to do something.  Who would have thought that a farm girl from southern Alberta would be driving a truck with abortion imagery signs through the largest city in Canada? 

If I can do this, so can you.