I find that continuous self-reflection is a powerful tool, especially since patterns will begin to emerge as you constantly look back and evaluate your personal goals versus achieved goals. Emotions also play a key role when reflecting, as recalling how you felt at the time a major decision in your life was made, can play a key factor in all future decision-making, helping to provide key insight and understanding into your own life priorities and making it easier to narrow down options the next time you find yourself stuck at a fork in the road in life.

***

The RESET Button

When I started out on this adventure earlier this summer after choosing to leave Social Innovation Generation at the University of Waterloo following the end of my two-year contract, I had absolutely no idea where I would end up come September. I would be lying to you if I told you that I was not scared at all throughout the months leading to the end of my contract in June; that the prospect of letting go of everything that was familiar, everything that I was comfortable with both in Kitchener-Waterloo and Toronto, was really no big deal and that I had all the answers in the world.

To be honest, I was really scared. The thought of the unknown and the unfamiliar was certainly daunting, but the overwhelming feeling of needing to hit the ‘reset’ button in my life was a lot stronger, leading me to leave everything that I knew behind and pushing myself beyond the limits of my own comfort zone. In order to make this happen from a practical standpoint, I had to reduce all of the different layers of my life, to a point where I was feeling the most vulnerable, and then tell the world,

“OK, what now? Come at me with everything that you’ve got!

I am ready.”

Context is Everything

And this is where the discussion of how important context is for the emergence of possibilities comes into play; possibilities that you otherwise would never have imagined that you would (or could) pursue in a million years, had it not been for the context of the environment itself in which the opportunity emerged. Since the beginning of this past year, perhaps maybe even earlier, I have been feeling the unnerving pull to do something drastically different with my life, that there was something out there calling me that was as unclear and undefined then, as it is now.

Yet, the only difference between now and then is the context within which these opportunities are emerging.

As much as I was beginning to feel part of the emerging, dynamic and #KWawesome culture of Kitchener-Waterloo, involved with helping to plan Ignite Waterloo and TEDxWaterloo among other initiatives, as well as meeting and getting to know a lot of people within the social entrepreneurship community in Toronto, I felt that there was something more out there in the world that I needed to explore.

When I realized that I needed to change the context of my environment – living, studying and working in southwestern Ontario, Canada for the past eight years since I first arrived from the UAE – in order to allow opportunities to emerge that I otherwise could not possibly even imagine, the only thing that made sense to me was not renewing my contract at SiG@Waterloo for another year, selling or giving away all of my unnecessary personal belongings (large furniture, unused/unwanted household items, etc), packing everything that was of personal value in my car, and then driving across the country from Toronto, ON to Cranbrook, BC where my parents currently reside, in order to spend a couple of weeks relaxing and spending quality time with my family, with the beautiful Canadian Rocky Mountains in the background.

“We feel free when we escape, even if it be from the frying pan into the fire”

- Eric Hoffer

Of course, before I embarked on this cross-Canada road trip that was symbolic of changing the context of my environment, I was able to squeeze in a week-long trip with Monika to New York City and Washington, DC. During the trip to Washington DC, I was able to come full-circle on a leadership journey that had started when I was seventeen years old having just graduated from high school in the UAE; when I was invited to deliver the opening keynote speech at the Global Young Leaders Conference. To provide some perspective, I attended the GYLC back in 2002 as a delegate; life is certainly beautiful in the way it unfolds at times.

Two months down the road on this adventure, or 4,000 kms away from Kitchener-Waterloo depending on how you look at it, I had hinted that I would be making my way further out west to Vancouver in September.

It seems that this direction was largely influenced by one of the goals that emerged as I was making my way across the country. The very simple, yet almost profound goal of making my way to Mile 0 of the Trans Canada Highway in Victoria, BC, a highway that stretches form coast to coast and is rivalled in length only by the Trans-Siberian Highway and Australia’s Highway 1, would certainly go a long way towards completing the journey of hitting the ‘reset’ button in my life, and starting all over again.

For the time being however, it looks like this personal goal of reaching Mile 0 of the Trans Canada Highway on the west coast will have to wait awhile, as it looks like my life is being pulled in a completely different direction than I could have ever imagined.

I am looking forward to seeing how everything unfolds in Europe. Wish me luck.

“Faber est suae quisque fortunae”

“Every man is the artisan of his own fortune”

- Appius Claudius Caecus

Photo taken on the side of the Trans Canada Highway somewhere in Manitoba, on my way to Regina, Saskatchewan. Cross Canada Road Trip 2010.

I have posted a blog post recap of my recent cross-Canada road trip, complete with pictures taken on my Nikon D5000, on my new photography website, photography.renjie.ca/blog

The full gallery of photos and accompanying blog post can be found at http://photography.renjie.ca/2010/08/photos-of-the-canadian-landscape/

Vancouver in September 2010

As for what my tentative plans are now moving forward, it looks like I will be making my way to Vancouver at the beginning of September for a period of two/three weeks to see what’s going on. There are no definite plans as of yet, I’m hoping to confirm some dates in the next couple of days as well. During this time in September, I’m hoping to meet with some really cool people involved with the social entrepreneurship/social innovation community, and to see where I could possibly fit in.

So if you are in Vancouver in September and would like to grab a coffee or a drink or two, please let me know by getting in touch via email (renjiebutalid at gmail dot com) or hit me up on Twitter/Facebook. Would love to hear from you!

Looking forward to the next step in this adventure.

Your friend,

Renjie

Check against delivery

Thank you very much for the kind introduction, I appreciate it.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, most especially to the delegates of the Global Young Leaders Conference. My name is Renjie Butalid and I am from Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, a city that is home to one of the most famous and recognizable products in the world: the Blackberry smartphone produced by Canadian company Research In Motion. Now for my own curiosity, how many of you own a Blackberry? Well then, I actually own an Apple iPhone myself, but please don’t let that information leave this room, since I do have to go back to Waterloo after all.

It is my sincere pleasure to be with all of you here in Washington, DC this evening.

On a personal level, my presence on this stage is extremely humbling. You see, back in 2002, I was a 17-year old teenager who had just graduated from high school in the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East. That summer soon after finishing high school and before I went off to the University of Waterloo in Canada to eventually earn a degree in Economics and Political Science, I found myself here at the Global Young Leaders Conference as a delegate. At the opening keynote, we were in a room much similar to the one we are in now and I was in the audience surrounded by a group of exceptional young people from all over the world, just like all of you today. Many of the people I met back at the GYLC, I still call friends to this very day.

And just so everyone knows, when I was a delegate at the GYLC eight years ago, I was a delegate representing India. Where are the Team India delegates in the audience this evening? Namaste.

And I remember all I could think of when I sat quietly and reflected, after having traveled thousands of miles to get to this conference, which was also my first visit to the United States of America, was,

“What am I really doing here?”

“Am I really a leader?”

“I don’t even know what it takes to lead, let alone, know what it takes to be a ‘global young leader’.”

Now, if you find yourself asking these very same questions at this particular moment in time, I will let you in on a secret that has taken me a while to discover.

That it is OK to be scared and uncertain, not knowing what to expect and to not have all of the answers all the time. At times, it is ok to even question whether you have the capacity and makings of a leader. I know that I’ve certainly questioned myself in the past, especially when I was a highly involved student leader at the University of Waterloo, where at one point, I had the responsibility of overseeing a budget of over $1.2 million dollars on behalf of 24,000 undergraduate students when I was on student government. I’ve also questioned myself on numerous occasions, most recently as a community organizer involved with a number of local community events back in Waterloo. But I prevailed.

What I have learned throughout my own leadership experience is to let that feeling of self-doubt and uncertainty motivate me and I would encourage all of you to do the same; there is after all, only a very small difference between excitement and fear of uncertainty. Instead of being scared, tell yourself that you’re excited to be here and open yourself up to the possibilities that exist out there in the world. There is a reason why you are all here in Washington, DC and will be in New York City, attending this global conference on youth leadership over the next ten days. This is an opportunity of a lifetime and I really hope that you make the most of it.

The fact that you are all here this evening tells me that you all believe in yourselves, and that there are people out there who also see your leadership potential and capabilities, be they your parents, teachers, guidance counselors, friends or mentors. There is something very powerful in the notion that someone out there believes in you. It is equally as important to have this boost of confidence at such a young age and this is one of the many reasons why I am truly excited for all of you in the coming days ahead. This is only the beginning of your global leadership journey, where you ultimately begin to believe that you are a leader; it eventually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Now, in a world where the real and pressing problems of climate change, poverty and hunger, deforestation, peace and global conflict, water and food scarcity, conservation, overpopulation, human rights, and many more; where these problems are accelerating at a pace and level of complexity never before seen in history, it is evident we require new tools and approaches that will enable us to tackle these problems at their level of scale. If ever there was a time the world needed young people to step up to the challenge, to work together and find innovative solutions in order to tackle these complex global issues, that time is NOW. And that is why, standing before you this very evening at the opening of the Global Young Leaders Conference, where all of you will have the opportunity to discuss many of these problems in greater depth and working towards solutions in the days ahead, I remain hopeful, especially as a young person, who is not much older than many of you in this room today.

For I firmly believe that young people – us – have the power and the opportunities like never before to affect positive change in this world today. At this conference, you have the opportunity to meet people from all over the world, to make new friends from countries that perhaps you never knew even existed, and to imagine a world of new possibilities as you begin to interact and work with people and organizations, especially those in positions of leadership on the world stage, such as the United Nations.

If you are willing to step up to challenge the status quo, with the firm belief that there is a better way to operate as humanity in the world today, know this, that you are joining a movement, which according to renowned environmentalist, social entrepreneur and author, Paul Hawken, describes as the largest movement the world has ever seen. In light of many of the world’s problems and challenges, this movement currently provides hope, support and meaning to billions of people all over the world. And again according to Hawken, no one really knows exactly how large this movement of tackling the most salient problems of our day, really is; all we know is that the action is taking place all over the world, in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refugee camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums. I would add conferences like the Global Young Leaders Conference into the mix as well.

I would also like to throw a note of caution for the young, intrepid changemaker however. Ric Young, one of Canada’s foremost thought leaders on social innovation, has forewarned that the real work of change is long and frustratingly slow, with these moments of transformation every now and then. Profound social change is not something that happens overnight, as the mainstream media including 24-hour cable television, would have you to believe. Nor is it something that is linear or predictable. Throughout history, we have seen that transformative social change – from women’s suffrage, to moving from an agrarian to an industrialized, and now knowledge-based economy – has happened and can continue to happen in the future; all we have to do, according to Young, is tap into the latent energy that exists in society, in communities around the world. There is no question that we all live and operate in this world, and that we do have some measure of responsibility and the opportunity for having an effect in it. It is not hard to convince people who have a leadership mentality that making a contribution now to the future is a significant thing to do. It no longer becomes a question of why, but how?

Now that I’ve given you an overview of the context of the world we live in and described some of the challenges that we, as humanity, collectively face, let me now say a few words about leadership, most especially servant leadership, and how these types of leaders enable and inspire others.

To use the often-quoted saying by Marianne Williamson,

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us… Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you… We are all meant to shine, as children do. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Building on this, I now want each of you to take a moment to just think about the words “Leader” and “Leadership” based on your own experiences. What do these words mean to you?

Now that you’ve given this some thought, I would like to make the distinction between leaders and those who lead. Leaders, using the textbook definition of the word, are people or organizations that hold formal positions of power and authority. In short, these types of leaders are the ones who say, “I’m the boss and I’m in charge around here.” They also usually say, but not always, “It’s my way or the highway.”

On the other hand, those who lead, are people or organizations that do not necessarily hold any formal positions of power or authority, but are able to inspire and motivate us because they are driven by firm beliefs and convictions. We follow them not because we have to, but because we want to. We ultimately believe in what they believe and stand for, and eventually we take their cause as our own.

A great and very recent example of this was the election of Senator Barack Obama to the White House in 2008, where he was elected to became the first African-American President of the United States of America. The Obama campaign slogan of “Yes We Can”, ultimately spoke to the millions of Americans, especially young Americans, who came out in massive droves to volunteer for the campaign and to vote Obama into office. Obama’s presidential campaign at the time, spoke to the urgent need and desire for profound change in the country, and in the world. However, we do need to keep Ric Young’s warning in mind, the work of real change is long and frustratingly slow, with these moments of transformation that do not just happen overnight.

We also only need to look at the thousands of people who came out to hear Obama speak when he was out on the campaign trail, both in the United States and abroad, as an example of a leader who was able to inspire others to dare to imagine possibilities. To go back even further into history, we have the examples of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi who led movements of thousands of people, based on the causes they believed in.

Obama, Martin Luther King and Gandhi are all household names and almost always come to mind when we think of great leaders able to inspire and motivate others. But how many of you have heard of Majid Mirza? Ruby Ku? Kristina Lugo? Nick Petten? And the list goes on and on. Chances are, you probably haven’t… yet. You see, they are all friends of mine, and in some way, shape or form, they inspire me for they are all working towards creating a positive impact out there in the world, both in Canada and as far away as Pakistan, Botswana, Malawi and Thailand, in ways that fulfill their desire to challenge the status quo.

Now, take Majid for example, an introduction to the term ‘social enterprise’ a couple of years ago led him to an internship with the Acumen Fund in Pakistan last summer, to work on their Micro Drip Project where he helped farmers in rural areas grow their crops in a sustainable manner. Social enterprise in this case, refers to a practice of operating a business model that has a positive social and environmental impact, while generating monetary returns allowing it to be financially sustainable in the long run. In other words, it is a new way of doing business where the bottom line is not solely how much money can be made, but what positive impact can we have in society in the process as well.

Of course, Majid’s story is similar to Ruby’s, Kristina’s, Nick’s, and the hundreds of individuals I know that are just like them. They are ordinary young people just like you and me wanting to change the world, doing what they do and inspiring others in the process. What I am trying to say is that you don’t need to be rich and famous, a great speaker, or even have the best hair, in order to be a great leader. Of course having the best hair always helps, but it is not essential.

French writer and aviator, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, once said

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather, teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

Going back to the Barack Obama example, “Yes We Can”.

Inspired leaders – those who lead – are driven by a cause, a higher purpose or a strong belief that there is, and can be, a better way of doing things. The traditional model of leadership involves being in charge, having the position of authority and power and being served by others. In the world we live in today and the complexity of the global challenges that we face, we can no longer afford to depend on the traditional model of leadership, where one person sits at the top and makes the decisions that affect us all. The good news is, this traditional model of leadership is giving way to the evolving concept of Servant Leadership, first coined by Robert Greenleaf in his seminal 1970 essay entitled, “The Servant as a Leader”, which suggests that true leadership involves humbling yourself and serving others. Other characteristics of the servant leader include, being trustworthy, self-aware, a visionary, empowering, relational, competent, having good stewardship and being a community builder.

Again, we follow these inspired servant leaders not because we have to, but because we want to. When you talk about what you believe in, you will attract those who believe what you believe, and right then and there, you have the beginnings of a movement.

Remember, always strive to be someone who leads, inspires and serves others.

And finally, now that I’ve talked about the context of the world we live in today and shared some of my key insights on inspired servant leadership, I would like to use the last portion of my talk to discuss humility and self-identity within the context of leadership.

Paul Saltzman, photographer for The Beatles and award-winning film director, has said that the concept of humility is “not about making yourself feel small but rather, understanding your size in the vastness of the universe”. To me, this speaks volumes in understanding how you see yourself in this world, let alone the universe, as well as to the concept of true leadership requiring humility and the capacity to serve others.

In the opening of my talk, I mentioned that I was from Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, simply because I have lived, studied and worked there for the past eight years, and it is as much a part of me as my cultural heritage and background. In many ways, the story is a lot more complicated, as beyond simply “coming from Waterloo in Canada,” I do consider myself to be a global citizen given my background and history.

I was born in the Philippines to middle-class, hard-working Filipino parents, who decided to move to the United Arab Emirates when I was five years old, in search of new beginnings and a better life for our family. Growing up in the United Arab Emirates until I was seventeen, I was always unsure of my identity and where my place was in this world given that I was living in a foreign country. Was I Filipino who just happened to have lived-Middle Eastern experiences? Or was I Middle Eastern with a Filipino background? Two years ago, I became a Canadian citizen, so you can imagine the thoughts that were going through my head when I thought about my identity and where my place was in this world.

Now I tell this personal story of my background and my search for identity because I believe that it is important to know who you are as an individual and where you have come from, in order to begin to understand where your place is in this world and where you are headed in the future. Of course, this is a journey with an unknown destination, and going back to early on in my speech, it is ok to not have all the answers all of the time. I’m still not too sure where I am headed in the future, but all I know is that I am headed in the right direction and I am excited for it. Being with all of you here this evening in Washington, DC is certainly a clear indication of that to me.

To go back to what I believe in, I firmly believe that young people – us – in this day and age, do have the power and the opportunities like never before to affect positive change in this world. And if those opportunities somehow don’t exist, there is nothing stopping you from creating them. As humanity, we are more connected today than we have ever been in the past; we literally have the world at our fingertips. How many people here have Blackberrys and iPhones again?

I also only have to look at my friends Majid and others, as concrete examples of young people affecting positive change in their communities, to be convinced that there are better ways of doing things – from creating effective government policy and better business practices that generate not only financial, but also social and environmental returns, to ensuring education, healthcare, food and clean drinking water is available to everyone, most especially the world’s poor, the 1-2 billion people living on less than $2 a day.

As GYLC delegates who are about to embark on a shared journey together, embrace this opportunity of a lifetime, dream big and strongly believe that you CAN make a difference in this world.

In the words of William Shakespeare,

“Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them”

I wish you all the very best of luck. Thank you for having me. It has been a pleasure to be here this evening and I look forward to your questions.

(Above: Somewhere in Michigan – Road trip across the USA – February 2008 Edition with
Kevin Royal, Shawn Grover and Adam Halpert)

Building on an earlier blog post, I intend on making my way across Canada solo at the end of the month, all the way from Toronto, ON to Cranbrook, BC. I will be traveling from July 26 to July 30 and will be covering approximately 4,400 kms.

The long drives each day should provide me with a lot of time to think and reflect, and on occasion, sing along at the top of my voice to the loud music blasting from my car speakers. Of course, I plan on downloading a number of audio books and comedy podcasts as well to keep me company and would be open to any recommendations. Please feel free to leave them in the comments section of this blog post.

Below is the tentative schedule of my road trip across Canada, alongside the embedded Google map that showcases the route I intend to take in order to get to Cranbrook, BC.

View Larger Map

Monday, July 26 – A. Toronto, ON  to B. Sault Ste. Marie, ON

Tuesday, July 27 – B. Sault Ste. Marie, ON to C. Thunder Bay, ON

Wednesday, July 28 – C. Thunder Bay, ON to D. Winnipeg, MB

Thursday, July 29 – D. Winnipeg, MB to E. Regina, SK

Friday, July 30 – E. Regina, SK to F. Cranbrook, BC

Six Degrees of Separation – Perhaps YOU Can Help?

As I make my way across Canada, I would certainly be open to anyone wanting to show me around their city or town as I am passing through. (Anyone have a friend in Wawa, Ontario for example?)

For the cities highlighted in bold scheduled on the tentative dates above, it would be great if it also came with an offer to crash on your couch for the night.

(Above: Sigma Chi House, Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, Texas -
Road trip across the USA – February 2008 Edition with Kevin Royal, Shawn Grover and Adam Halpert)

If you or a friend of a friend would be willing to help me out with this favor, please do get in touch with me via email – renjiebutalid (at) gmail (dot) com, Twitter, Facebook, or feel free to leave a comment at the end of this blog post.

If you are able to help me out, what you would get in return is great company and lots of laughs, and a new found friend who would be forever grateful. Thanks so much and I look forward to hearing from many of you.

- working on my newly launched photography blog, Photography by Renjie; now that I have purchased by first DSLR camera, the Nikon D5000, the possibilities are endless;

- making my way across Canada from Waterloo, ON to Cranbrook, BC at the end of July (details to come) and documenting the entire road trip along the way;

- hiking, swimming, camping and generally exploring the great outdoors of British Columbia while I am there;

- building a kite from scratch, now that I have seemingly found a new hobby after stumbling across it almost by accident back in April;

- beginning to plan TEDxWaterloo 2011 via email and Skype working sessions with a solid team, after the success of the inaugural TEDxWaterloo back in February this year;

- imagining the possibility of an Ignite Cranbrook taking place in mid- to late September, modelled after the success of Ignite Waterloo;

- and of course, looking forward to my keynote speech at the Global Young Leaders Conference in Washington, DC later this month.

Clay and his partner of 20 years, Harold, lived in California. Clay and Harold made diligent efforts to protect their legal rights, and had their legal paperwork in place—wills, powers of attorney, and medical directives, all naming each other. Harold was 88 years old and in frail medical condition, but still living at home with Clay, 77, who was in good health.

One evening, Harold fell down the front steps of their home and was taken to the hospital. Based on their medical directives alone, Clay should have been consulted in Harold’s care from the first moment. Tragically, county and health care workers instead refused to allow Clay to see Harold in the hospital. The county then ultimately went one step further by isolating the couple from each other, placing the men in separate nursing homes. Ignoring Clay’s significant role in Harold’s life, the county continued to treat Harold like he had no family and went to court seeking the power to make financial decisions on his behalf. Outrageously, the county represented to the judge that Clay was merely Harold’s “roommate.” The court denied their efforts, but did grant the county limited access to one of Harold’s bank accounts to pay for his care.

What happened next is even more chilling: without authority, without determining the value of Clay and Harold’s possessions accumulated over the course of their 20 years together or making any effort to determine which items belonged to whom, the county took everything Harold and Clay owned and auctioned off all of their belongings. Adding further insult to grave injury, the county removed Clay from his home and confined him to a nursing home against his will. The county workers then terminated Clay and Harold’s lease and surrendered the home they had shared for many years to the landlord.

Three months after he was hospitalized, Harold died in the nursing home. Because of the county’s actions, Clay missed the final months he should have had with his partner of 20 years. Compounding this tragedy, Clay has literally nothing left of the home he had shared with Harold or the life he was living up until the day that Harold fell, because he has been unable to recover any of his property.

With the help of a dedicated and persistent court-appointed attorney, Anne Dennis of Santa Rosa, Clay was finally released from the nursing home. Ms. Dennis, along with Stephen O’Neill and Margaret Flynn of Tarkington, O’Neill, Barrack & Chong, now represent Clay in a lawsuit against the county, the auction company, and the nursing home, with technical assistance from NCLR. A trial date has been set for July 16, 2010 in the Superior Court for the County of Sonoma.

If say for example, Monika and I had been living in the United States in the early part of the 20th century, based on our race (i.e. Filipino and German-Portuguese), our relationship would have been looked down upon and in some cases, we may have even been thrown in jail if we decided to get married.

Anti-miscegenetion laws, otherwise known as miscegenation laws, were laws that prohibited interracial marriage. From the 19th century into the 1950s, most US states enforced anti-miscegenation laws. In 1967, the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled in the landmark case Loving v. Virginia that anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional, overturning Pace v. Alabama (1883) and ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.

Im happy that society has progressed to the point where interracial marriages are no longer an issue (generally speaking). In fact, in Canada, interracial marriages are on the rise especially as the number of visible minorities in Canada continues to climb where it is expected that an increasing number of them will marry outside their ethnic group. This comes as no surprise to me as I know a lot of mixed-race couples who have plans on getting married, having kids and raising a family even though they come from seemingly different backgrounds (in terms of race, culture, religion, etc).

It seems that Monika’s baby nephew, Nikolas aka “Tumbles“, is indicative of the emerging face of Canada/US (and perhaps other parts of the world), being of mixed Chinese-German-Portuguese heritage, but still 100% Canadian.

Back to the case at hand, it seems that society has not progressed far enough when two people who have spent a long time together, are forcibly kept apart by government strictly on the basis of their sexual orientation and with whom they choose to spend their life with. Everyone has the right to love and be happy with whomever they want, whether it is with a member of the opposite or the same sex.

I hope that Clay gets the justice that him and his partner Harold deserves, and that we finally recognize and place the same emphasis on gay relationships and unions just as we do with heterosexual relationships.

I’m going to miss the Vancouver Olympic Games.

These games certainly united the country, with yesterday’s Team Canada gold medal win over the United States bringing the country to a fever pitch. Yonge and Dundas in downtown Toronto was awash in a sea of humanity last night, with people out on the streets screaming, dancing and celebrating with one another. It also helped that with Team Canada’s victory in hockey last night, our total gold medal count came to 14, meaning we now hold the record for most gold medal wins by any country throughout the 86-year history of the Winter Games.

For a moment in time, it was amazing to be a part of something much larger than our individual selves.

Last night felt good to be Canadian.

Posted via email from renjie’s posterous