Melinda, Malala and me: Adventures with the Gender Council

When I looked out the Greyhound bus window as we pulled in to the Ottawa bus station, and saw a neatly dressed man standing beside a fine car, holding a sign with my name on it in neat letters, I knew for sure I had arrived at big-shot status.

We 19 members of the Gender Equality Advisory council for the G7 meetings in Quebec in June were gathering for three days face-to-face for the first time.

Aside from the civil servants who live in Ottawa, I think I was travelling the shortest distance of the 19, who come from the U.K., Africa and Asia.

My friend Pat Parnall told me I really should have arrived at the Chateau Laurier Hotel by bike. My son’s teenage students in B.C. were wowed at my ascendant position, and said “That is really dope!” (I offer you a new word which is replacing “cool” in young people’s vocabulary)

In consideration of the expenditure of taxpayer money, my senior bus fare was $60 return. In my suitcase were five copies of Malala Yousafzai’s autobiography brought to me by little girls wo had studied her life. In exchange, since all things must be mutual, I asked them for a photograph of themselves doing some activity such as soccer or school work or volunteering so that Malala could enjoy seeing whom she is inspiring.

Somebody had urged me to go on Netflix and see David Letterman’s funny and insightful interview with Malala at Oxford University in England where she is a student. She is a smart, articulate 20-year-old, whose Malala Fund raised $6 million last year for her dedicated cause: the education of girls. Her goal is that every girl in the world reach grade 12.

Also in my suitcase was an impressive explanation of an invention, a painless, disposable needle from retired engineer and global thinker Dick Crawford of Lakefield. He was hoping I’d have an opportunity to pitch it to co-chair of our Council, Melinda Gates of the Gates Foundation, for her worldwide inoculation program for children. I did find an assistant who took it and promised to send to the vaccination department.

But good manners dictated I decline the humorous suggestion from a few friends that I tell Melinda they don’t like Windows 10. In a good exchange with Ms. Gates, who clearly spends a lot of time sitting on a straw mat in the global south listening to women’s dilemmas, she and I chatted about the inspiration we each got from the Fourth United Nations Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995.

We had memorable sessions with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who has set all this in motion. He may be the most gendersensitive man I have ever met. There was an unforgettable panel discussion he affably chaired, featuring Leyma Gbowee, a feisty Liberian Nobel winner, Roberta Jamieson, former ombudswoman of Ontario and Order of Canada member (“Don’t mess with a Mohawk”!), Lieut- Gen Christine Whitecross, a Canadian who head the NATO College in Rome, Melinda Gates, and the head of UN Women, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka of South Africa. There were bureaucrats in the room who actually wept as that conversation continued.

Mme. Gregoire- Trudeau came to breakfast with us, telling us her four-year-old was refusing to go to school that day, so she “left them all with my husband.” We could relate.

We had lunch with a dynamic group of progressive, grassroots women who work with CSOs (Civil Society Organizations), such as Oxfam, Inter Pares, MATCH International and Climate Action Group. There I met a Syrian liberation activist- inexile. She was in deep conversation with our Canadian diplomat Peter Boehm, who has the heavy task of carrying all our ideas forward to his counterparts who accompany their leaders to Charlevoix in June.

Peterborough-Kawartha was definitely there, participating. Hope we make a difference for the marginalized all over the world.