SPEAKER SERIES
What: 110th Anniversary Tea for St. Margaret鈥檚 School, featuring keynote speaker Sally Armstrong
Where: Fairmont Empress Hotel, Crystal Ballroom
When: Nov. 4 from 1- 4 p.m.
Tickets: $150 (include high tea and copy of Ascent of Women by Sally Armstrong and $50 tax receipt), available at the door or online:
Over three decades of reporting on girls and women in conflict zones around the world, Sally Armstrong hadn鈥檛 had a good news story to tell.
Until now.
鈥淭here is change; there is change everywhere,鈥� said Armstrong, a journalist, author and human-rights activist. 鈥淲e鈥檙e not there. My God, we鈥檙e not even close to crossing the finish line, but the issue is on everybody鈥檚 mind.鈥�
Armstrong, called a war correspondent for the world鈥檚 women, is the keynote speaker at a 110th Anniversary Tea for St. Margaret鈥檚 School on Sunday at the Fairmont Empress Hotel. All proceeds of the fundraiser go to bursaries and scholarships.
Both 鈥渋conic鈥� institutions are celebrating 110-year anniversaries with a shared history that includes original buildings designed by architect Francis Rattenbury and a shared belief that the time for full equality and inclusion for girls and young women has come.
鈥淭his iconic hotel that鈥檚 known for history and excellence teams up with the oldest girls school on the Island. It lets you know the position of girls today,鈥� said Armstrong, a member of the Order of sa国际传媒.
鈥淚 have very strong feelings about what I want to say to those girls.鈥�
Armstrong has reported on women and girls in Afghanistan, the Congo and the Middle East. With her 2013 book Ascent of Women, she talks about a tipping point in the fight for emancipation, and in her 2014 book Uprising she cites the leading women making change happen.
鈥淭here has never been a time in history where girls were this powerful or this influential or important in turning around about what looks like a catastrophe,鈥� she said.
Today鈥檚 change-makers are exercising personal will 鈥� not political will requiring the stroke of a politician鈥檚 pen or public will relying on petitions and protests 鈥� but rather a new type of leadership, speaking truth to power and standing up to inequality and injustice, Armstrong said in a phone interview from Cairns, Australia.
鈥淭hings you hoped for are starting to happen and I think there is a level of energy that is unstoppable now. These girls are the tomorrow people, I think.鈥�
Education is key, and social media, though flawed, is helping them deliver their message and drum up momentum.
鈥淲hat we鈥檙e seeing now is young girls using personal will,鈥� Armstrong said. 鈥淟ike Malala, like [Emma] Gonz谩lez, like [Alaina] Podmorow standing up and saying: 鈥榃hat you are doing is not OK with me.鈥� And I think that鈥檚 incredible. They are empowering other young people and it鈥檚 working and that鈥檚 the message I want to take to the podium with that speech.鈥�
Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani activist and the youngest Nobel Prize laureate, was on a bus in October 2012 when she and two other girls were shot by a Taliban gunman in an assassination attempt in retaliation for her activism. It sparked an international outpouring; the Taliban was internationally denounced. She survived and became a prominent activist for the right to education, founded the Malala Fund and co-authored I am Malala.
鈥淢alala has become the world鈥檚 daughter,鈥� Armstrong said. 鈥淎nd how did she become the world鈥檚 daughter? She said: 鈥� I鈥檒l do it my way.鈥� 鈥�
Emma Gonz谩lez, 18, co-founded the gun-control advocacy group Never Again MSD after surviving a mass shooting in February at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. At the March for Our Lives she stood silent for six minutes and 20 seconds, the time it took for the shooter to kill 17 people.
鈥淭his is pretty darn nervy stuff,鈥� Armstrong said.
Alaina Podmorow, 17, a Grade 11 student in Kelowna, inspired by a speech by Armstrong in 2006 about the human-rights violations against Afghan girls, founded Little Women for Little Women in Afghanistan in 2007. It has raised almost $500,000 and started 鈥淟ittles鈥� across North America. Her motto is 鈥渆ducation = peace.鈥�
鈥淎s a result there鈥檚 thousands of girls in school,鈥� Armstrong said.
Armstrong also cited Shamsia Husseini, 17. While she was on her way to Mirwais Mena School for Girls in insurgency-plagued Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2009, a masked man on a motorcycle sprayed her face with battery acid. Disfigured, she recovered, returned to school and became an influential language and science teacher and fundraiser. She maintains she sought a greater revenge on her attacker than former Afghan president Hamid Karzai who had promised the attacker would be executed.
鈥淚 have given him the worst punishment more than the president could have ever given him 鈥� I am teaching the girls,鈥� Armstrong said, relaying Shamsia鈥檚 words.
Weeks ago, Armstrong was in south Sudan teaching female journalists.
鈥淭hey are in the most ghastly situation. Every damn thing is wrong in that country and here they are, they don鈥檛 want to leave, they want to learn, they want to practise better journalism,鈥� she said. If you can鈥檛 talk about the injustices, you can鈥檛 change them, Armstrong said. And education is key, she noted.
鈥淲omen and girls, they are driving the bus today.鈥�
That wasn鈥檛 the case in 1992 when Armstrong was in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. On her last day there, she heard rumours of rape camps: 鈥淚 could not believe it was true, but through the day, I got more and more evidence it was true.鈥�
She gathered names, mobile numbers, anecdotes, 鈥渆verything I could get.鈥� She returned the next day to sa国际传媒 and handed over the information to a large news organization with daily deadlines as opposed to months-long deadlines at Homemakers magazine where she was editor-in-chief. Seven weeks passed after which a four-line blurb appeared in Newsweek about gang rapes in the Balkans.
鈥淭wenty thousand women were gang raped, some of them eight years old, some of them 80 years old,鈥� she said. This was before the 2003 Darfur genocide in Western Sudan and Rwandan genocide in 1994.
Furious and dismayed, Armstrong returned to Sarajevo to report on Eva Penavic, 44, a Croat brutalized in the Balkan War.
Homemaker鈥檚 broke the story in 1993: 鈥淭he story went into the stratosphere,鈥� she said.
She recalls the same happened in Afghanistan.
鈥淣obody cared about Afghanistan until 9/11,鈥� Armstrong said. 鈥淚 was there all throughout the Taliban. I had no competition. There was absolutely nothing about the women.鈥�
Today, Malala is front-page news, she said. That has changed.
In sa国际传媒, when charges of sexual assault or harassment against CBC broadcaster Jian Ghomeshi went to court in 2016: 鈥淚t had liftoff in sa国际传媒, but it didn鈥檛 stay up there, but #MeToo is staying there and I think it鈥檚 a sign of the times, I really do.鈥�
#MeToo is a phrase about sexual harassment and sexual assault popularized by American actor Alyssa Milano on Twitter last year following sexual-misconduct allegations against Harvey Weinstein.
鈥淟ook at the way they speak about the Never Again March and the #MeToo campaign and the fight to save the environment and against the bullies in our midst 鈥� including the one in the White House,鈥� Armstrong said. 鈥淜ids are speaking out about this.鈥�
And the world, albeit slowly is moving toward gender equality 鈥� Iceland became the first country in the world to enforce equal pay; Saudi Arabia ended the world鈥檚 only ban on women drivers; Lebanon scrapped its rape-marriage law under which a rapist could be exempt from punishment if he married his victim, she said.
鈥淚t鈥檚 happening,鈥� Armstrong said.
At the tea, St. Margaret鈥檚 will introduce its inaugural emerging leaders award presented to four alumnae: Actor Katherine Evans; scientist and engineer Jean Hsu, mechanical engineer Kate Strachan and government relations worker Karina Sihota.
鈥淲e鈥檒l celebrate our 110 years and show how we are part of a global empowerment movement,鈥� said Barbara Sutton, director of external relations for the school. And the Empress is focused on diversity and inclusion, so the partnership is a perfect fit, said Tracey Drake, the hotel鈥檚 director of public relations.
St. Margaret鈥檚 was the first girls鈥� school in sa国际传媒 to have a fully fledged STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) program.
鈥淚 see this event Sunday as such a huge celebration. Good on them for using that new curriculum driving engineering and technology and telling those girls to go ahead and be an astronaut,鈥� she said.
As she speaks, Armstrong said she will be looking into the faces of tomorrow鈥檚 change-makers in the Crystal Ballroom on Sunday.
Armstrong hasn鈥檛 had a good story to tell until recently, so she鈥檚 enjoying telling it now.
鈥淚 think this is the time to talk about girls, how they relate to each other, about gender, about bullies, about the role they play,鈥� Armstrong said. 鈥淓very single one of them in the world today is playing an important, exciting and maybe even history-in-the-making role. I鈥檝e seen it in Afghanistan, South Sudan, all over the world and absolutely in sa国际传媒.鈥�
鈥淚 hope they walk away and say: 鈥榊es that鈥檚 me, I鈥檓 that girl, I can do that, I can do anything,鈥� because they can,鈥� Armstrong said. 鈥淚 hope they feel proud of themselves and fill the tomorrow promise because they are the 鈥榠t鈥� crowd.鈥�
