About Creating Connection
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Creating Connection is a network of more than twenty welcoming and inclusive communities across Ontario committed to sharing in authentic conversation, promoting meaningful activities, and fostering holistic wellness practices, including: coffee & conversation, adult colouring, drumming circles, mindfulness meditation, yoga, lifelong learning & lectures, and knitting circles.
Our mission is to invite everyone into community, to continually learn & grow, to abolish poverty & end needless suffering, to pursue peace & justice, and to live life meaningfully together. Creating Connection is sponsored by Community of Christ Canada. For more information or to find a group near you, please contact [email protected] |
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Kerry Richards
Labyrinth Discernment Walk | Coffee and Conversation Kerry is one of the Creating Connection team founders. He is a Conversation Meetup group facilitator. His journey has been one of broadening inclusiveness that has vastly informed his progressive ministry in Community of Christ as an Administrator. He upholds dialogue as a sacred practice of mutuality within community. He recognizes ecumenism as a blessing that leads us all into relationships of peace. He has found the labyrinth to be sacred space. |
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Mary Jean Belrose
Drum Circle Mary Jean lives in Port Elgin, Ontario where she facilitates a community drum circle every Friday night for all ages. She has completed Level 2 training with Circles of Rhythm in Calgary, AB where she previously lived and was first introduced to drumming. It was there that she saw that the drum circle offered far more than just drumming to make music. People are drawn together in community while spirits are lifted. Participants learn about themselves and the opportunity for transformation and spiritual connection is opened. Our creative inner child is freed and burdens are lightened. Mary Jean also enjoys gardening and is passionate about creating whole foods plant-based meals. |
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Troy Roach
Meaningful Discussion / Coffee and Conversation Troy is one of the Creating Connection team founders. Over the past seven years, he has hosted nearly 500 conversation groups on a range of topics, industries, personalities, cultures and social issues. He brings many years of language learning, semantic meaning, and group dynamics experience to his distinctive approach to dialogue facilitation that is reflected in the meetups he hosts regularly. He is passionate about the pathway to peace that broader understanding and perspectives can bring to the world. When not "engaging the human journey" - his personal directive - he is pounding the pavement training for long distance marathons. |
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John Hamer
Connection Events John is the coordinator of the History, Theology, and Philosophy Meetup each week at Toronto Centre Place (streams live every Tuesday at 7:30 Eastern at CentrePlace.ca). A historian and professional mapmaker for numerous academic presses and museums, John lectures on a wide variety of historical and philosophical topics with a special focus on Medieval and ancient worldviews. John also serves pastor of the downtown Toronto Community of Christ and as president of Sionito Group of Charities which provides social housing in Toronto. |
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Leandro Palacios
Mindfulness Meditation | True Listening Meditation Leandro leads meditation sessions and presents lectures at Toronto Centre Place. Leandro's approach draws together his background in Computer Science with his interfaith spiritual exploration, primarily in Christianity and Buddhism, as well as his interest in mythology, neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy of mind. Leandro's certifications include Applied Mindfulness Meditation (University of Toronto) and Mental Health First Aid (Mental Health Commission of Canada). |
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Alex Leikermoser
Yoga Alex Leikermoser is the Founder of various wellness companies and projects as well as having worked with and consulted for leading companies and their CEO's as well as distinguished personalities. Alex is known for her various innovative designs, product lines, inventions & techniques in the arena of sustainability, wellness and healing. For more information visit http://www.alexleikermoser.com |
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Shonette Carson
Echoes of Peace Art Workshop Shonette, an artist known as “ThreeS”, is an internationally known writer, acrylic painter, and floral designer. She is the author of “Peacetrum,” “My Dear Child, I have Gone to Heaven,” and “Ian’s Bad Choices Turned His Life Around.” Carson volunteers her time teaching community art classes to inspire others to find their inner artist. While she favours First Nation designs, Carson finds herself immersed in all forms of art, acrylic painting, and designs that inspire her to bring beauty and happiness to others. Each canvas is meant to be a celebration of life, hope, peace, love and enlighten the hearts and spaces they make home. |
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Catherine Mitchell
The Postures of Peace Catherine is a Certified Grief Recovery Specialist who grew up with a big extended family, experiencing how life’s unexpected moments shape us. She spent 20 years studying how people live and love, hurt and heal. Catherine describes the Grief Recovery Method as the skills that everyone needs and feels it constitutes a lifetime of learning arranged into a tidy, accessible, package. For more information visit www.griefrecoveryontario.com |
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Susan and John Cooper
The Baha'i Faith (Lecture) Susan and John are longtime active members of the Baha'i Community of Barrie. They are married and have four children and two grandchildren. John organizes major events like World Religion Day, Baha'i Holy Days, and other festivities. He also coordinates outreach programs feeding the homeless and prepares children's classes. He is a stained glass artist, print maker, children’s book illustrator and painter. Susan serves on various Baha'i committees, teaches children's classes, coordinates junior youth groups, and organizes service projects and fundraisers. She is a registered massage therapist with 19 years of practice. |
