Presentations

Every year 160-200 women are killed in Canada. We know about 100 children are murdered every year as well. What are we doing about it?

Do you even know what is going on in your back yard? next door?  What about in your own house? Do you use derogatory language when talking about women, allow sexist video games in your home, tell blonde jokes?

We have to change our language and the way we talk about women, the way we label them, dissect them and demean them.  I've spent the last six years working on The List of 4,000 missing and murdered women and children in Canada-3 years on my newly released book Rampage:the pathology of an epidemic. For five years now we have been doing the Memory March-a walk/vigil to honour the women and children. But for many years before that I have worked in my own way to help ease the violence against women by doing Spirit to Heal workshops, producing plays with an anti-violence message and by my other writings.

I would love to come to your group meeting, your club, organization or event and speak about the issues we are facing and how we can change the way we think, how we can make a difference.

Contact me at gwynne1@telus.net to book a time.  We can change the world one person at a time.

I am available to do presentations about the research I did for the last six years in order to write the book Rampage;the pathology of an epidemic. It all began innocently enough---I had just finished my play Missing (toured lower mainland, fraser valley and Vancouver) and was researching for a new play. I wanted to write about the Highway of Tears. Missing is about Verna Bjerky who vanished from Hope, BC in 1981 and about the women who went missing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
I realized that there was no list of missing and murdered women and children. Nobody was keeping track. I've always been a ferret when it comes to digging deeper and nosing around---I ended it up discovering a book called The Femicide List that was sitting on a shelf at Simon Fraser Library Archives written by Mary Billy from Squamish, BC.  I had heard of Mary who published a feminist magazine in the 1990s called Herspectives.
I called Mary, got a copy of her List of 1, 875 names and that is how it all began. I hae worked on The List for 6 years now-adding names as I research and discover new names. Most date back to 1989 after the Montreal Masscare but as I found names I put them on The List even if they were from the 60s or 70s. It didn't matter when they were killed or went missing, the idea had already begun to have a yearly Memory March to honour and inform.
We held the first one five years ago in Vancouver and the last one in 2011 we held in Abbotsford. Three years ago I was so amazed by the people that I met while working on The List; grassroots workers who cared and were keeping their own smaller lists, working on policy changes, public awareness, but all united by the passion to end violence against women and children, that I decided to write a book.  The book is about that journey.
Rampage: the pathology of an epidemic is about a lot more-compelling and interesting, it tells many stories and discusses some of the roadblocks.  I wish I could say there were answers but I have not found one answer; many solutions that should be taken but no real answer.
To order the book email me at gwynne1@telus.net
$22 plus HST and shipping=$29.64
If you would like me to speak at an event, workshop, gathering . . .let me know. This is my life's work.