Showered with Love
Just popping in from maternity leave to share a few shots from a recent Open Homes baby shower for baby Theodore. I can’t wait for Theo to get to know these dear folks who love him already and have showered him with blessings.
We had a blast soaking in the love of our community. The pictures of the onesies crowded with messages in Arabic, Spanish, and English make me tear up! (And obviously the food was amazing…as always.)
I can’t close this blog without getting spicy about all the news coverage of Roxham Road recently, from the premier of Quebec decrying the numbers of refugee claimants the province is welcoming to federal politicians playing political games with refugee lives. The majority of my Open Homes friends crossed the border irregularly at Roxham Road, but only because they were not allowed to cross at other official border points due to the Safe Third Country Agreement between the US and Canada.
Closing Roxham Road isn’t the answer—it would only feed smuggling networks and further endanger refugee lives.
The answer is cancelling the Safe Third Country Agreement so that refugee claimants can safely cross from the US to Canada or from Canada to the US, as also happens. That’s exactly what the Canadian Council for Refugees, Canadian Council of Churches, and Amnesty International are trying to do by challenging this agreement in the courts, on the grounds that the US is not in fact a safe country for all refugees, due to their practices of detention (including solitary confinement and often lack of sufficient access to the asylum process) and inadequate protections for refugees fleeing gender-based violence. This case is currently awaiting for response from the Supreme Court of Canada. I’m really proud that the Church has been a key part of this case.