Trinity Newmarket Singers

There will be music; there will be dancing, and joy, and excitement, and pride.  Saturday, June 13th is the York Pride Festival, and the highlight is the Pride Parade which passes by our church on Main Street.  Sunday, June 14th will be our Affirming Anniversary Service, led by the Affirming and Inclusivity Team, of which I am Chair.  Trinity’s Pride Parade Participation 2026          The parade is scheduled to start at 4:00pm and end around 5:30pm. Marchers assemble starting at 3:00. Hospitality table is to be set up around 2:00, and tear-down is at 6:00. Thousands of people (25,000 estimated) will be in Newmarket for the Pride Festival, and they will pass by our church on Main Street. Every year we have been a welcoming presence on our lawn. I'm so proud of my church! Let’s show them that we are a welcoming Affirming church! And, it’s a prime location for watching the parade. Come join us! Please come and see me (Renate) a...

 

A lovely afternoon in lovely company ending a lovely season of singing together! It was so nice that the air conditioning was good and strong. I had prepared a no-bake treat, date brownies. They're made of dates blended with peanut butter and cocoa, a little flour and cinnamon and then pressed into a muffin cup, then topped with melted dark chocolate with a little butter. Frozen briefly and kept cold in the refrigerator. Yum! Little clementine oranges, nice and cool were also perfect for a hot afternoon.  Summer is coming and it's already hot outside, time for pools and cottages and slow afternoons on the porch or deck. Summer activities often feel like an escape, a vacation even for a few hours. Love was a good theme for our last time together for the season. One of the themes of love songs that we encountered in the past and noticed again today was that the world sometimes disappears when you're with your lover. Just being together can be an escape. Love can take you away...

My second week on a Sailing and Flying theme was a little different from last week, but a few of the songs were the same (since it was a different group) and some of the themes we explored were the same.  We talked about the feeling of freedom that flying and sailing, and even swimming give us. There's something special about being surrounded by air or water instead of being on land, and even when there are other people there, it feels more private or personal. You can be introspective when you're in a ship or an "airship". It's a vacation, when you're not at home on the ground. The theme of flying and sailing as an escape came up, and that home and love were to be found on the ground. Also, dreams and fantasy live "up there" or "out there" and not here on the ground. We also reminisced about dancing, and wished that we had more opportunities to dance.   We had an interesting cake experience. I bought a cake at Dollarama to try (really!) an...

It was a lovely afternoon in lovely company! With only 2 of us there, we did a lot of talking, and even looked at my vacation photos on the big screen. We nibbled on carrot and cucumber sticks, and left the banana muffins for my family to enjoy. We noted that veggies are so much more delicious when somebody else peels and cuts them, something I'm happy to do. Fruit is kind of the same. Sections of oranges, slices of apples, balls of cantelope to pop in your mouth, all better because they come with care.  Our theme was Flying and Sailing , and we both had good memories to share, and reminisced about all kinds of things that the songs inspired, including slow dancing.  There is a feeling of freedom, of being carefree, when you're moving over a body of water with wind and waves and lots of sky above. It's a weird and wonderful privilege to be on a sailboat, or a tour boat like I was on recently. Flying in an airplane too is really extraordinary and astonishing when you think a...

Here are some of the photos I took on Thursday, Moose Hide Campaign Day. I especially wanted to include the image of the diagram presented by the speaker in the Cultivating Safe Spaces workshop. It was a very interesting and useful talk. It reminded me of the saying "Be the change you wish to see in the world". At the centre of, the core of a safe space is your understanding of your self. Your emotional regulation and understanding of your perspective and of other people's emotional states and their different perspectives will help to keep spaces safe- and, you need to be aware that safety is not without discomfort.     I also wanted to add the photo of the Indigenous singer from Thunder Bay. Her name is Natasha Fisher and I think she's excellent and will be listening to more of her music. Here is a bit of her performance on Facebook .  And here is my shot of her on Thursday  Natasha Fisher