QEW Staff

Anne Mitchell , General Secretary

Anne's love for nature developed when she was a child in Scotland, where she liked to go into the countryside and woods to pick berries. "I got into environmentalism when I realized that we were polluting nature and knew the answer was more than a matter of coming up with technological fixes. The question is, how do we listen to nature and how do we respond and acknowledge that it is a complex system that has its own intelligence that we don't have all the answers to?"

After working as a high school teacher in Scotland until the late 1960s, Anne emigrated to Canada, where she served as a group counselor in an institute for juvenile delinquents in Montreal. In the 1970s she worked in Ottawa in development education "to help Canadians understand how their actions impact people in the developing world." From 1977 to 1979 she worked for a Canadian nongovernmental organization in Swaziland in southern Africa, as a rural education coordinator in a poor black community.

After returning to Canada in 1980, Anne began working against apartheid in the Republic of South Africa. In Ottawa she was a fund-raiser for the International Defense & Aid Fund (IDAF) for southern Africa, which provided aid to political prisoners and their families. "There were so many things that converged on the anti-apartheid struggle. Looking back at all those activitiesboycotts, acting in communities, visiting, telling their storiesI can see that it had a major influence on my life."

It was also through her anti-apartheid activities that Anne first became acquainted with Quakers. "Some of the most inspiring Quakers that I met were those in South Africa who were at every demonstration outside of Parliament buildings in Capetown and were providing aid to those who were being oppressed by the government. I thought, `Wow these are great people.' I already knew something about the history of Quakers. I was impressed when I got to see some real ones."

In the early 1990s, after the release of Nelson Mandela from prison and the transfer of IDAF work back to an Africa-based organization, Anne and her husband, Gordon McClure, moved Toronto. They soon joined Toronto Friends Meeting, which they were pleased to find was very active in resisting policies of the Canadian government that they saw as undermining social justice and ecological integrity.

Wondering what to do next with her life, Anne was drawn to the work of the Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy (CIELAP).

As CIELAP's Executive Director of Development, she made environmental policy recommendations to federal and provincial governments on issues that ranged from waste management to water to biotechnology. She helped develop an Environmental Bill of Rights in 1993-94 and pushed for the appointment of a Canadian Commissioner for Environment & Sustainable Development. CIELAP also has been trying to get labeling for genetically modified (GMO) products.

In the early 1990s she served on the Steering Committee of QEW. She helped to persuade Canadian Yearly Meeting to contribute to QEW. She also was instrumental in getting donations and payment for Canadian representatives' travel to QEW Steering Committee meetings. She was active with the QEW Sustainability Committee and helped plan the QEWAnnual Meeting when it was held in Toronto.

Anne and Gordon live in an inner city neighborhood of Toronto that has a mixed population, including Portuguese, Vietnamese, and Chinese. Their basement apartment has been used at various times as temporary lodging for Iraq-war resisters from the U.S. trying to get refugee status, as well as Bosnian refugees and their families. They haven't had a car since moving to Toronto, finding public transit there to be superb. They have solar water heating panel on their roof, and Anne likes working in a little garden—her personal patch of wilderness with butterflies. <>

Louis Cox, Publications Coordinator

LOUIS HAD NEARLY 10 YEARS of professional journalism experience before beginning volunteer publications work with QEW in 1990. Over the 22 years he has served QEW, he has overseen the creation of nearly 20 Earthcare-related trifold pamphlets, a half-dozen booklets, and several books. He became paid half-time QEW Publications Coordinator in 2000.

During this period he has progressively increased his desktop publishing skills, hardware, and software, and has taken on the additional responsibilities of maintaining the QEW website. In 2005 and 2006 he created a new QEW wesite to replace the one that had been in use since 1999. He served on the QEW Steering Committee from 1990 to 2000 and has been active in staffing the Earthcare centers at FGC Gatherings and other Quaker events. He frequently accompanies Ruah in her travels for QEW and provides posters and other graphics support for these events. He and Ruah are active in the Earthcare committees of their monthly and yearly meetings.

At home Louis devotes a lot of time to 21st-century homesteading in the woods of northwest Vermont—organic gardening, cutting and storing firewood, maintaining and upgrading their renewable energy systems, and completing their off-grid, solar-heated home. He and his wife, Ruah Swennerfelt (former QEW General Secretary), also enjoy nature walks, wintertime cross-country skiing, bicycling, reading, board games, and playing/listening to music.

LIVING IN THE COUNTRY has offered many benefits as well as environmental challenges for Ruah and Louis. Their many opportunities for spending time in nature and living comparatively simply have strengthened their environmental witness and ability to speak with an authentic voice for the vision and witness of QEW. On the other hand, their relatively greater reliance on private automobile transport is perhaps the greatest factor in the size of their worrisome ecological footprints. Within this setting, they have made significant strides toward ecological sustainability—by reducing, reusing, and recycling and by avoiding the use of fossil fuels and toxic substances.

They are also happy to be part of a loose-knit rural community of neighbors who are not only friends but who share monthly neighborhood potlucks and neighborhood projects, as well as tools, labor, and occasional carpooling. •

For more information about Ruah and Louis’s personal “EarthPeace” witness, go to their personal website, http://www.peaceforearth.org.