Peace

Vancouver Monthly Meeting is an Apartheid-Free Community

In May of 2025, Vancouver Monthly Meeting became the first Friends Meeting in Canada to sign the Apartheid-Free Communities pledge*. This pledge is an initiative of a worldwide movement of Quaker and other faith communities and communities of conscience committed to striving to dismantle Israel’s
apartheid regime. The text of the pledge is as follows:

WE AFFIRM: our commitment to freedom, justice, and equality for the Palestinian people and all
peoples;
WE OPPOSE: all forms of racism, bigotry, discrimination, and oppression; and
WE DECLARE: ourselves an Apartheid-free community and to that end,
WE PLEDGE: to join others in working to end all support to Israel’s Apartheid regime, settler
colonialism, and military occupation.

By signing the pledge, a community publicly commits to take actions that express their love for equality, justice, and a better world for all people everywhere as a member of the Apartheid-free Communities network, which shares resources, opportunities for action, and support.

As of June 2026, 10 monthly meetings and one half-yearly meeting are now signatories to this initiative convened by the American Friends Service Committee.

The Apartheid-Free network is a coalition of communities who pledge to work together to end Israeli apartheid. This coalition formed in 2022, following the emerging consensus among the international human rights community that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people amounts to the Crime of Apartheid. Originally created by faith groups in North America, the network currently includes congregations, faith communities, solidarity organizations, non-profits, campus groups, businesses, and more. More information about the Apartheid-free network and pledge is available at https://apartheid-free.org/.

*The full minutes of the 22 May 2025 Meeting for Worship with with a Concern for Business are available here:VaMM_M4W4B_22May2025. Minute 6 concerns Vancouver Monthly Meeting making the Apartheid-Free Communities Pledge. 

Jerilynn Prior Interview – Conscientious Objection to War Taxation

Jerilynn Prior has spent her life refusing to fund war. In this interview with Patrick Diaz, she shares the story of her tax resistance, from protesting American military spending during the Vietnam War, to taking the Canadian government to court.

At the heart of her case: should conscientious objection to military taxation be a constitutional right? Jerilynn argued it should, protected under the freedom of conscience protections in Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Jerilynn talks about what led her to take this stand, rooted in decades of Quaker practice. She also breaks down what it’s actually like to bring a legal test case, which tactics worked, and which didn’t.

This interview draws on Jerilynn’s 1992 Sunderland P. Gardner Lecture, published as “I Feel The Winds of God Today: Leadings as Explored by a Woman, Mother, Doctor, Quaker” — Canadian Quaker Pamphlet Series No. 38.

Additional Resources:

I Feel The Winds of God Today: Leadings as Explored by a Woman, Mother, Doctor, Quaker

David Bucura and Rachel Bugenimana – Friends Peace Teams and Africa Great Lakes Initiative

David Bucura and Rachel Bugenimana joined the Vancouver Monthly Meeting on World Quaker Day (05-Oct-2025) to talk about their work with the African Great Lakes Initiative (AGLI).

The African Great Lakes Initiative (AGLI) strengthens, supports, and promotes peace activities at the grassroots level in the Great Lakes region of Africa (Burundi, Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda). AGLI responds to requests from local religious and non-governmental organizations that focus on conflict management, peace building, trauma healing, and reconciliation. AGLI sponsors Peace Teams composed of members from local partners and the international community. Friends Peace Teams is a Spirit-led organization working to develop long-term relationships with communities in conflict around the world to create programs for peace building, healing and reconciliation.

David is the Coordinator of the African Great Lakes Initiative (AGLI) of the Friends Peace Teams. He and his wife Rachel Bugenimana live in Kigali, Rwanda. David has served as General Secretary and General Superintendent of Rwanda Yearly Meeting. He was the first director of Peace House, a Quaker-inspired center for interfaith and interethnic reconciliation started the year after the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.

Additional Resources:

Linda Taffs – The Occupation Hurts the Occupier and the Occupied

On 11-Mar-2025 Vancouver Island Quaker Linda Taffs gave the following talk at the Vancouver Quakers meeting house.

In November 2024, Linda Taffs participated in a witness pilgrimage to the occupied West Bank and southern Israel organized by the Canadian Friends of Sabeel, an ecumenical Palestinian liberation theology centre in Jerusalem. In her talk “The Occupation Hurts the Occupier and the Occupied” she describes what she saw during her pilgrimage.

Additional Resources: