Roots and Wings: Interfaith Community Breakfast celebrates 50th gathering

By Chuck Howitt

When Sandy Milne thinks back on all the bacon and eggs, bagels and fruit that have been consumed in the name of faith, she can’t quite believe it.

“I’m astounded that it’s lasted this long,” said Milne of the Interfaith Community Breakfast, which will be celebrating its 50th gathering this year. “It’s really a tribute to the openness of people in Waterloo Region.”

Taking place May 28 at Bingemans in Kitchener, the annual breakfast will bring together more than 300 people from scores of different faiths and walks of life, including Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, First Nations, Buddhist and many more.

Milne hasn’t been on the planning committee of the breakfast for every gathering, but she has been a member for a long time. She joined the committee in the late 1990s and is currently co-chair. What keeps her coming back?

“You meet such interesting people,” said Milne, who is also one of the founding members of Interfaith Grand River, an organization representing different faiths and spiritual traditions in the region.

At first she felt like a “deer in the headlights” to be surrounded by so many important people. That meant hobnobbing with the mayors of Kitchener and Waterloo and leaders of the old K-W Council of Churches, who founded the event in 1976 to bring the rapidly diversifying community together.

But since then Milne has come to realize it’s not about meeting local big shots. “It’s about community.”

The theme of this year’s breakfast, Roots and Wings: Love Moves Us Forward, looks back at the event’s origins and peers into the future. To that end, two guest speakers have been lined up—one young and the other, not so young.

They are Jim Erb, a Waterloo Region councilor and retired funeral home director, who has attended every breakfast except the first one, and Misha Birmiwal, a Grade 10 student in the International Baccalaureate program at Cameron Heights Collegiate in Kitchener.

His years as a funeral home director have taught him that regardless of faith, “we all have similar hopes, dreams and aspirations,” said Erb. The value of the breakfast is that it enables people of diverse beliefs “to get to know one another better and respect our differences but celebrate our similarities,” he noted.

When Erb first started attending, the breakfast was dominated by the Christian faith, but now it draws from a multiplicity of traditions and beliefs, he said.

Misha, 14, said she is “incredibly excited and so honoured to be part of this as a speaker.”

Though somewhat nervous about speaking to a large group, she has danced in competition since the age of three and recently served as the emcee at a human rights symposium organized by the Waterloo Region District School Board.

A member of the Hindu faith, she was born in India but moved to California at the age of one with her family, which includes one sister. The family moved to Kitchener in 2018. Her father is an engineer with Snowflake, a software company, and her mother teaches art.

She enrolled in Cameron’s baccalaureate program, which offers courses such as languages, sciences and math, because “one of the driving forces in my life is the pursuit of knowledge and it seemed like a great opportunity to pursue this passion.”

Her career goals include “something in the humanities or the publishing industry. As long as I am fulfilled by my work, I think I could do anything.”

The breakfast is one of the only events of its kind in Canada, said John Lougheed, a retired United Church minister and former chaplain at Grand River Hospital. There used to be an Ontario Prayer Breakfast in Toronto and the National Prayer Breakfast is still held in Ottawa, but they are both Christian-dominated events.

The strength of the Interfaith Community Breakfast is that “it has morphed into a multi-faith gathering,” he noted.

Lougheed credits former Kitchener mayor Carl Zehr for putting the breakfast on its current path. Zehr used to co-chair the breakfast but when he retired in 2014, he urged the community, including Interfaith Grand River, to take it over.

Past speakers have included University of Waterloo president David Johnston, historian and author John English, MPP Elizabeth Witmer and founders of the Working Centre Joe and Stephanie Mancini.

For tickets, go to Eventbrite or email InterfaithCommunityBreakfast@gmail.com.