A Table for Canada’s YMCA

A MosaicProject

An Invitation to Build a Table

• To celebrate our diversity and our unity

• To tell the stories that reveal who we are and what matters to us

• To remember why we’re proud to be Canada’s YMCA

Inspired by Voyageur

A Table Made from Everyday Stories

• Ordinary people who prove that everyone can make extraordinary contributions

• Stories that belong to:– volunteer and staff members– participants– international partners– community members

A Table Made by HandThe Brothers DresslerAward-winning craftsmen who specialize in creating modern furniture from old materials

A Table Made with Help

Jowi Taylor and Six String NationAn experienced guide for a national mosaic project

A Table Made by All of Us• 53 Associations (and friends)• 53 pieces (or more)• 1 table• in 1 year• unveiled at the

2011 AGM

A Table Made of Stories like this One …

“In the room that night, seated in rows of folding chairs, were some thirty young people, mostly in their late teens, obviously labourers, members of a discussion group that met weekly, often to hear a speaker. At the front of the room, seated at a plain wooden table, was the group’s organizer, a man not much older than the members themselves, with straight strong features and with eyes that were clear and blue, a YMCA worker named Murray Ross. He welcomed the members …”

~ Kenneth Bagnell from The Little Immigrants: The Orphans Who Came to Canada 1860s – 1930s (1980)

The Story of Canada’s YMCA• The last history was written

in 1951 by Murray Ross, the YMCA youth worker who would go on to become a national YMCA staff member, and the first President of York University in Toronto

• The next history will be written by …