Unitarian Church of Montreal

We Take Action in the World

Through our concern for social justice and through our care for the earth and the interdependent web of existence, we take action in the world.  We are a Green Sanctuary and a Welcoming Congregation.  We are engaged in working with our local community to support those outside our walls in need.   

Some of our latest projects include:

Our 2009-2010 religious education (RE program)

Wondering which Religious Education (RE) group your child fits into this year?  We have something for babies through teenagers heading into young adulthood. Read on to find where your little - or big - ones fit into our set-up for the 2009-2010 year.

What's up in religious education this coming year?

Download 2009-2010 RE Calendar

Spirit Play helps children connect with inner self

After the May, 2009 successful Spirit Play training session and conference, our church now has 15 educators trained in this exciting new approach to religious education. Adapted from the Montessori school model and Jerome Berryman's Godly Play, Spirit Play helps children slow down and listen to their inner selves.

Garden and Primers Classrooms Enjoy Spirit Play

Our director of religious education (DRE), Caroline Balderston Parry, has been hard at work incorporating Spirit Play into our childrens' lives.

Here's how it works: The children all leave the Sanctuary together, but instead of going straight to their rooms, we all congregate in the foyer outside the Garden Room so that the day’s storytellers and doorkeepers can be introduced – we hope the children will get to know more adults’ names this way, as well as having more relationships with adults at UCM.

Planting the Seeds of Survival - Here and Abroad

Numbers are not my friend. I like to deal in words. What’s more, I come from a background where there was little transparency about church finances. You put your money in the basket on Sunday and trusted it was well used. I wonder now at my own naïveté. I thought it was vulgar to talk about money in church. I guess I thought that churches just ran by themselves. Now I know better.  (Janine Cobb, Board Secretary of the Unitarian Church of Montreal, in an address to the congregation November 1, 2009)

Empty Bowls raises over $13,000 for Montreal's hungry

For the past two years, the Unitarian Church of Montreal has joined forces with Congregation Dorshei Emet to make Empty Bowls - a project to raise money for the hungry - a great success.  On April 18, $6,500 was raised at the Unitarian Church by people who bought a hand-crafted bowl, enjoyed some soup and bread and listened to some great jazz. The following weekend, Empty Bowls raised more than $7,000 at Congregation Dorshei Emet. All the money will be pooled to help six Montreal organizations that help the hungry.

Empty Bowls, a grass-roots effort to fight hunger and raise awareness for the issue in local communities, began in Michigan in 1990 as a high school fund-raising project. Since then, it has spread throughout the world and has raised millions to combat hunger.

Getting to Know Our Muslim Neighbours

For the past year, as we have been having a conversation about reasonable accommodation, we’ve been reminded of the kinds of discrimination that the Muslim community here faces.  

The Covered Garden Refugee Centre

One of our ongoing projects is to support refugees in Montreal.

The Solar Cookers Project

In the past year, we've raised thousands of dollars and sent hundreds of solar cookers to help refugees in Darfur.