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Ottawa
Raging Grannies at Carleton U.
Posted March 8, 2007 Report by Grannie Pat On February 26th, seven Ottawa Raging Grannies went to Carleton University to demonstrate, to a Women's Studies class, what we do. It was a large class, led by Professor Victoria Bromley, whose invitation was a repeat of last year's, though this year's class had been studying activism and were much more interested in our version of it. From the time we launched into "We Are the Raging Grannies" by way of introducing ourselves, we had these students' avid attention, so we went on to sing another eight or so. Each of us told a little about the song we were about to sing, along with the circumstances or story about when we used it. We got appreciation and laughter in all the right places. When Prof. Vicky asked for questions after this, there was certainly no lack of them. They were intelligent and curious. Ria and Rosalie exhibited their wonderful large banner, with the tiny maple leaf twinkling on the American flag, with the caption: Is This Our Future? Wake Up and Resist. It got an immediate and horrified reaction. And Jo showed a sample sheet of our contestoria, The Story of War, and explained how it has been used - at the War Museum, for example. In the previous hour, we were preceded by the Wakefield Grannies, whose work is varied and whose fund raising is energetic; witness their bringing four African grannies to Wakefield last summer, and their ongoing efforts to fight AIDS in that area of the world. So the Carleton class got a rather large dose of what older women are doing to improve society and protest the wrongs they see. And, oh yes, we got the usual question about the dearth of older men being Grumpy Grandpas. We all speculated, but nobody came up with an answer to that. Photo by Shannon Lee Mannion  |
Ottawa
Raging Grannies