BTU Montreal Opening Reception

Bridges that Unite Launches at Concordia University, Montreal

March 9, 2010

Hope and action were the messages of Montreal’s Bridges that Unite exhibition launch at Concordia University on Tuesday, March 9, 2010. David Gutnick, CBC Radio host of popular program “In the Field” related how his experience working with Aga Khan Foundation Canada and other similar organizations had changed his perspective on the challenges of the 21^st century. He understood the world better, he said, and what it means to be Canadian. This set the stage for Khalil Shariff, CEO of AKFC, to call the audience to action. Canada, he said, is a country born of ideas and ideals. “It is our values that shape us and our sense of diversity, tolerance, and pluralism that we export,” he said. Issuing a challenge to the audience of more than 100 guests, added “how can Canadians take this huge resource further?”

The evening ended appropriately with a clip from AKFC’s new documentary film, Change in the Making, a Journey in Afghanistan, in which Canadian journalist Richard Phinney travels back to Afghanistan after several years away to see whether Canadian aid is making a difference among impoverished rural communities in the northern province of Badakhshan. Instead of finding the poppies, guns, and violence he remembered, Phinney found new water pipes born out of community cooperation, ‘social audits’ demonstrating democracy at its finest, and girls dreaming realistically of being doctors and teachers.  It was a fitting endnote to a hopeful evening.