Audrey Neumann of the Diocesan Justice and Peace Unit receives ashes on Good Friday from the Rev. Bern Barrett during a Lenten vigil near the Vancouver Art Gallery, as Seth Klein of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives looks on. Members of the Unit and others have been holding a vigil each Wednesday noon throughout Lent to urge governments to adopt a comprehensive plan to reduce poverty. By several measures BC's rate of poverty and the number of children in poverty is far too high, they insist. (David Dranchuk photo)

Eleanor Martin and Margaret Ramsay of St. Christoper's were awarded a West Vancouver Heritage Achievement Award for their recent history of the parish, and were also mentioned by their local MLA in the Legislature.

The Rev. Richard Stetson is moving to the Diocese of BC to be rector of the Anglican Parish of Salt Spring Island this summer. He will continue as interim priest-in-charge at St. Mary's, Sapperton, through July 31.

The Rev. Jonathan Blanchard has been appointed by Bishop Michael Ingham to be the associate priest at St. Mark Ocean Park, in South Surrey. At the parish the Rev. Craig Tanksley was inducted as rector last month on St. Patrick's Day, with the Rev. Dr. Richard Leggett preaching. Tanksley was priest-in-charge at St. Mark's for a year. At St. Alban, Burnaby, the Rev. Faun Harriman was inducted as rector.

The Rev. Ellen Clark-King for the second year was an ecumenical delegate in New York City to the annual session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. She wrote from the conference:

Archdeacon Ellen Clark-King

"Changing patterns of care-giving and responsibility between the genders will take more than governmental action and legal change. It needs a sea-change in cultural understanding that reaches into the hearts of families and transforms them from within: a sea-change that awakens men to their responsibilities in the home and frees women for their duties in the world."