The West Coast is set to honour, celebrate and support the amazing and powerful women in their communities and beyond.
A full slate of empowering activities and conversations is scheduled for International Women’s Day on March 8 at Tofino’s Best Western Tin Wis Resort.
The day will start with a walk from Tin Wis to North Chesterman Beach and back beginning at 10 a.m. followed by a lunch at noon, yoga with instructor Norannda Sigmund at 1 p.m. and Tuff City Saunas sessions will run from 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. with registration available through eventbrite. More information can be found at www.wcrs.ca or by emailing womensoutreach@wccrs.ca.
The Womens’ Day event is being presented by the Westcoast Community Resources Society with support from Tin Wis, Browns Socialhouse and Tuff City Saunas and activities are catered to this year’s theme: Accelerate Action.
“It’s symbolizing us moving forward in advocacy and support for women and bringing those issues forward to the government bodies and other organizations that help support us,” WCRS Women’s Outreach Worker Liza Hutton told the Westerly News, adding the event is open to all.
“You should participate to come together with other women in the community and with anyone in our community that is interested in banding together to support each other and speak about these issues openly and talk about things that are maybe under the surface or not talked about enough. When we come together, we’re stronger together. We want to empower women in our region as well as the people that can support women.”
WCRS Housing Manager Jill McQuaid said she’s been happy to see the region’s participation in International Women’s Day evolve over the years to become a more robust celebration and fruitful reflection on the societal improvements needed.
“There’s a lot more support around it. People intentionally come out for it to show their support. Before it would be members of (WCRS) staff, but now we regularly get community members coming in and walking with us and participating in events,” she said.
“I think people in the community realize that, when we all band together, we bring more strength to the cause. We really highlight all the things that we have to celebrate about women, but also things that we’re still working towards. It’s good that people come out and help us flag those issues.”
The society’s Executive Director Laurie Hannah emphasized the inclusivity of the day and said she hopes to see a large group of allies show up as a beacon of support.
“It’s allyship. We’re not only asking for the women to come, we’re asking for our allies to come. It’s for everyone to come together to really commit to seeing the discrepancies still and to commit to making changes; to be our allies, our partners,” she said.
She added that the day also offers an opportunity for the WCRS to showcase the support it offers to residents, including a new program that encourages community members to provide anonymous third-party reporting to the RCMP around sexual assaults.
“It’s getting people to know how to be a good bystander and helping people to become good bystanders,” she said. “If you see something that’s not right, say something. This helps us to accelerate change and helps us all to be better individuals and better community members for each other.”
The WCRS recently conducted a vital conversation around sexual assault in the region, which included a comparison of Tofino, Ucluelet, Port Alberni and Whistler with Tofino troublingly topping the list.
“The stats came out that Tofino had the highest rates of sexual assault for those four communities,” she said
Hannah has previously worked with the Whistler Women’s Centre and helped roll out a third-party reporting program there and was surprised to see Tofino’s sexual assault numbers higher.
“That really did surprise me,” she said.
She added that an updated understanding around the definitions of sexual assault is paramount so that society moves towards zero tolerance for any non-consensual advances.
“We all need to be allies together for this to change our human behaviour,” she said.
She added that positive progress has been made throughout the West Coast and that community conversations are becoming more widespread and barrier-reducing.
“We’ve done a lot of work and we’re doing better. Just the fact that we’re talking about this is really huge. Over the years that I’ve worked in this field, we didn’t have open discussions; we weren’t having vital conversations around sexual assault. We were just doing our best to piecemeal it together for women, men and transgender (people) that were going through it. Now we’re talking about it,” she said. “We need to be able to have these open discussions so that we can help everybody involved…We want everyone to become better people and to reduce generational trauma in all of our communities.”
She added that International Women’s Day is a valuable opportunity to intentionally reflect each year.
“Sometimes we have more things we want to showcase and celebrate, but every year it’s important and it’s important for everybody throughout the world. We’re all connected. We’re all going through the human experience together and the more studies and the more research we do about uplifting women just goes to show that it uplifts the whole of society,” she said. “When you improve womens’ lives, it improves everyones’ lives.”
