Who is Christine Boyle & Andrew Weaver?

As the Earth and Spirit speakers series fast approaches we would like to give you a more background on our presenters. This week we take a look at our first two speakers Christine Boyle & Andrew Weaver.

 

The first speaker is Christine Boyle, who accompanied Naomo Klein on a recent trip to the Vatican. Christine is the director of Spirited Social Change, and a co-founder of Fossil Free Faith. Her commitment to justice, healing and community has lead her many places. She has worked for the Vancouver School Board, Vancouver Coastal Health, the United Church of Canada and is also a certified yoga instructor. She has also coordinated local community gardens, facilitated community kitchens, led youth retreats, ran workshops on environmental and social justice issues. 

 

Currently she coordinates the Interfaith Institute for Justice, Peace and Social Movements, and does strategic communications for the Columbia Institute and their Centre for Civic Governance. She also organizes and occasionally blogs via Spirited Social Change.

 

Christine is "motivated by a belief in the inherent goodness of people, and a longing for social institutions that support our deep desire to care for one another" and is "excited about doing faith-based community organizing, integrating progressive religious voices in our Canadian political discourse, and building justice-centered community for the 'spiritual but not religious' "

 

Her talk on Oct 7th at 7:30pm is entitled, “Faith Responses to a World on Fire”.

 

Dr. Andrew Weaver is currently the B.C. Green party MLA for Oak Bay-Gordon Head. Before this, as a climate scientist, Andrew served as Canada Research Chair in climate modelling and analysis in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria. He has been a Lead Author on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s scientific assessments and has authored or coauthored over 200 peer-reviewed, scientific papers.

 

Andrew is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. 

 

Over the years he has received many awards and in 2008 he was appointed to the Order of British Columbia and in 2013 he was awarded a Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal.

 

Andrew says

"I’m not your typical MLA, but I made the shift from science to politics because I want to use my background in science, policy and the community to offer vital perspectives that will strengthen our province and its future." and "For me, science is most exciting when it makes a positive difference in our lives"

 

His talk on Oct 14th at 7:30pm is about “The Political challenges and opportunities for mitigation of climate change.”