16: Margaret Rathnavalu - a podcast by David Goa

And there are others: those who have cultivated a sense of place, alert to what is unfolding. They work for a better common world and do so because ambition has not dimmed or colonized their aspirations. Usually, you have to look to find them since those with ambition tend to fill the public space. 

Among the indigenous peoples of Canada this distinction is vivid. Elders and knowledge keepers, often quiet and behind the scenes, tend the flames that enlighten and draw forth the pure water that mirrors what is unfolding, “the signs of the times”; those who speak, often a quiet word that illuminates how we may live attentive to the beauty and richness of our life together, a world fit for our children and our children’s children. 

Margaret Rathnavalu grew up on a farm near the hamlet of Duhamel in the Camrose district of Alberta. At the University of Alberta, she studied education. Following two years of teaching in Peace River she joined the development agency, the Canadian University Studies Overseas (CUSO) and went to Zambia in 1964. She taught children for six years. Then she returned to Canada with her husband Lawrence and together they moved to Wabasca-Desmarais, the home of the Big Stone Cree and Woodland Cree peoples. They both taught for three years. They listened, and learned and became friends. Returning to Camrose in 1980 she taught at the Chester Ronning School until her retirement in 2001. 

Margaret regularly seeks to engage political leadership, municipal, provincial, and federal as well as her fellow citizens. I have admired the depth of her learning about the challenges we all face given how the economy of Alberta and our larger world has been shaped. Fracking, the mining of the Fort McMurray region and coal on the eastern sloops of the Rocky Mountains, the despoiling of the waters of life, all have called her to listen and speak and seek healing. Her formation, learning, and her experience engaging politicians and corporate leadership surfaces many important lessons.