The standard definition of the term “broad” means to cover a wide scope of area or subjects. The informal definition? A woman.

Broad Conversations, an idea surrounding communal discussion, held its first gathering on March 21 at 541 Eatery and Exchange, gathering over 50 like-minded woman-identified, non-binary and gender fluid folk to discuss issues that matter.

The idea behind Broad Conversations emerged out of a desire for collective learning and informed conversation. Through gatherings and newsletters, Broad Conversations ultimately aims to promote community and host informal, discussion-based workshops. The first gathering, which coordinator Erin O’Neil stressed as an experiment, served as a space for individuals to discuss their feelings, questions, and ideas about the world in a communal setting.

“I realized that part of what I found so sad about what was happening in the [United] States and what I felt so much about the change in politics was that there’s a lot of apathy and a lot of hatred in the world. It wasn’t so much about one person getting into office, but it was the fact that people allowed that to happen,” said O’Neil.

“I realized that the antidote to that is getting people together… Broad Conversations is an opportunity for feminist broads to get together and converse about the world in a safe place,” she said.

The first gathering was themed around “Conversation”, and began with a panel of speakers with backgrounds in practice, activism and academia. The panel acted as conversational starters before guided conversations and open mingling.

The speakers, including Gachi Issa of McMaster Womanists, Broad Conversations coordinator Erin O’Neil and Elizabeth Maracle an Indigenous feminist, social worker and counsellor at the Sexual Assault Centre (Hamilton Area), discussed themes of conversation from their own experiences and the importance of conversation as a whole before guests were invited to discuss these topics amongst themselves.

#BroadConvos 1 was a thrill. Thank you to all the thoughtful, kind, inquisitive women who came. Newsletter signup: https://t.co/ZTAQmO6tBR pic.twitter.com/8a9UYWXgsp

— Broad Conversations (@broadconvos) March 22, 2017

“We need one another,” said Maracle. “Connection, respect and talking with one another can restore circles of support and trust. Oppression and violence disconnects and isolates people. Anything we can do to change that has great value. Conversations can give spaces to rage, grieve, question and challenge oppression. Conversations have the power to repair, heal, and restore social connection.”

Each gathering hosted by Broad Conversations is free. Instead of charging admission, attendees are asked to donate to a Broad Conversations giving group in order for a collective financial impact to be directed at a local feminist cause.

[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id="58" gal_title="Broad Conversations"]

“These events give a chance for feminists, change makers, seed planters to be with one another. They provide opportunities to connect, heal, strengthen, plan and mobilize. Living in colonialism is hard; I lose circles of connection all the time. I know it’s normal to disengage for safety’s sake but need connection and support in my life, especially since one of my life goals is to eradicate oppression and violence. When we acknowledge and listen to one another’s voices about our lives, we can expand our knowledge and momentum to impact social change. When we gather and discuss we resist oppression, we heal and strengthen our movements,” said Maracle.

O’Neil hopes to host gathering three to four times per year and has been approached with ideas of collaboration events from other like-minded groups, which she says could happen whenever there is an opportunity.

Megan MacLeod, a fourth-year honours health studies and gerontology student, has just finished her third annual Warm Up for Winter clothing drive. The campaign, which she started herself in her second year at Mac, collects and distributes winter clothing for children and adults.

MacLeod was inspired to start this initiative after volunteering and working at the Norman Pinky Lewis Recreation Centre in North Hamilton.

“I saw a need in the community for warm winter clothing,” she said.

“Children were coming to the after school program with inadequate winter clothing … [and] I definitely felt that I could do something to fill that need.”

She certainly did her best. As of the distribution on Oct. 19, she had collected 6000 items, far more than the 3000 last year and 1000 in the program’s first year.

The clothing was stored at MacLeod’s family home in Caistorville, a small town of about 100 people, where a team of her friends and family sorted and packed the thousands of items to be transported to the Hamilton community centre.

And because of her promotional efforts, only 200 items were left over at the end of the day. The network of community organizations and school principals helped bring a record crowd to her distribution day.

The reaction from those people who picked up the clothing was also positive.

“Some people shy away from reactions like [hugging],” she said. “But a lot of people were very appreciative of it, even if they didn’t … say it, you could tell … a burden was just released from them just because they didn’t have to put out hundreds of dollars to clothes.”

MacLeod’s community involvement is not limited to Warm Up for Winter. In fact, this is the third clothing drive she’s organized. The first was a shoe drive for people living in Haiti at the time of the earthquake, for which she sent 4000 pairs of shoes to help with earthquake relief.

She also organized Glitz, Glamour, and Graduation, an initiative that provided grade 8 girls with dresses and beauty services for their graduation ceremonies.

All of her campaigns were clothing drives, but she didn’t plan that.

“I didn’t think about any of them,” she explained. “They were all spur of the moment, and because there was a need.”

She plans to continue this kind of community service in future, and not just with Warm Up for Winter.

After completing her health studies program, as well as a certificate in not-for-profit business offered through the new Social Sciences collaboration with Mohawk College, MacLeod hopes to pursue a Master’s at McMaster and eventually work for an NGO.

“A dream job would be to take what I’m doing right now and turn it into a career … something along those lines, giving back to the community. I would love to eventually do that.”

Even as students have been breaching the barrier of the campus “bubble” in the past few years, many community social issues, both good and bad, remain under the average student’s radar.

The Vital Signs Report, released on Oct. 12 by the Hamilton Community Foundation, sought to shed light on community strengths and challenges through measuring the quality of life in Hamilton across 12 issue areas.

The report created three levels of concern through which community members could evaluate community issues. The Vital Signs Advisory Committee and several members of Hamilton Roundtable compiled the report for Poverty Reduction. Internet and telephone surveys randomly sampled various households across the city.

Across the board, survey responses noted that there was satisfaction with the community’s approach to addressing issues in “arts and culture,” “getting around (transportation)” and “the environment”.

The community was urged to take immediate action towards addressing the “gap between the rich and the poor” and “work-related issues.”

The most staggering and prominent finding in the report indicates the continued increase in number of people working full-time yet still living below the poverty line in Hamilton. The most recent data available, from 2006, shows that 6.7 per cent of Hamilton’s population is in this category. This average is a marked increase from both the Ontario average (5.5 per cent) and the Canadian average (5.8 per cent).

The gap between the rich and the poor, a major focal point for the Occupy movement, has persisted in Hamilton, mirroring larger national trends. In 2009, the poorest 20 per cent of Hamiltonians had 5 per cent of the total income, while the richest 20 per cent accounted for 41 per cent of the total income.

The report takes into account all the neighbourhoods across Hamilton, including the Westdale-Ainsley Wood area.

McMaster students were not specifically identified in the report. However, community engagement has been at the forefront of campus affairs. Community was a major part of McMaster president Patrick Deane’s visioning letter “Forward With Integrity.”

Siobhan Stewart, MSU President, emphasized the variety of ways in which students choose to engage in community affairs, especially through various MSU services and clubs.

“People find their own channel and have their own unique story about what community engagement means to them.”

Stewart also noted that there is increased mindfulness towards including both community and student opinion on Hamilton’s social issues.

Several McMaster professors and employees are actively involved in the Poverty Roundtable and have advocated for university involvement and projects to address social justice issues in Hamilton.

Gary Warner, former Director of the Arts & Science Program, past Chair of the Hamilton Community Foundation and Poverty Roundtable member, reflected on student knowledge of Hamilton’s inequalities.

“I think students are likely not aware of the impact of income disparity related to postal codes in Hamilton, which is reflected, for example, in vastly different life expectancy – 21-year gap – and in test results and gradation rates in Hamilton's secondary schools.”

The McMaster Poverty Initiative (MPI) is the most notable example of the call for collaboration between students, staff and faculty to examine Hamilton’s social justice issues.

Jeff Wingard, MPI Coordinator and a member of the Vital Signs Report team, remarked upon the increase in student awareness and engagement with the community, especially in exploring the community’s booming arts scene.

“[But] I think on the flip side ... there are deep pockets of poverty and real hardship that exist in Hamilton, which I think get a bit lost if you don’t see it [on campus]”

Wingard also spoke about the need for continued research on community inequalities and the equal importance of communicating this research to diverse audiences, including students and the populations being studied.

McMaster has a reputation of being both a research-intensive institution and school with a strong spirit of volunteerism and community engagement, most recently exemplified by events such as Open Streets McMaster and MacServe.

Warner suggested that in keeping with the recommendations made by the Forward With Integrity Community Engagement Task Force, McMaster should strive to assign higher value to community-engaged research.

He built a bridge in Hamilton, and three connecting Canada to the United States. He opened the Royal Botanical Gardens. And most significantly to students, he spearheaded McMaster’s move from Toronto to Hamilton. And yet now, 84 years after his death, Thomas Baker McQuesten is largely forgotten by the city he helped to shape.

Mary Anderson is hoping to change that.

“It’s wonderful to be able to tell the world what [Thomas McQuesten] did,” she said in an interview last week.

Anderson, who holds a PhD from McMaster in English, has dedicated her work to bringing the story of the McQuesten family back into the spotlight. She has written two books and three plays on the subject, and was presented a McMaster Alumni Hamilton Community Impact Award on Sept. 25 for her efforts.

The inspiration for this work came from a visit to Whitehern, the former McQuesten estate that has since been converted into a museum. Upon reading a sample of the letters the family had written, Anderson changed her focus of study from Irish poetry to the McQuesten family’s writings.

“[I was] entranced by them for their literary quality, for their depth of knowledge of history and science and city, Ontario politics, everything.”

With the help of a dozen students, she worked to digitize the 4000 letters the family had written. The content of the letters is now available online, along with a some photos from Whitehern’s collection.

Her most recent book, Tragedy & Triumph: Ruby & Thomas B. McQuesten, released in 2011, takes the content of those letters and tells the tale of the McQuestens’ lives, from the family bankruptcy, to Ruby’s premature death, to Tom’s political career.

She said the book wrote itself and described it as a “labour of love.”

While dramatic, Anderson feels the story of the McQuestens is also significant to the city. In recognizing Thomas as the “forgotten builder,” she feels Hamilton can solidify its sense of identity.

“Hamilton is so resistant to promoting Hamilton…[it] doesn’t know it’s important,” she said. But Anderson and McQuesten agree that the city is important, and that McMaster is a major part of that.

“Our whole development has been along mechanics lines,” McQuesten wrote in a letter, as found in Anderson’s book. “Hamilton has become too much a factory town. [McMaster] is the first break toward a broader culture and higher educational development.”

As a proponent of the “city beautiful” philosophy, Thomas McQuesten also aimed to improve the appearance of Hamilton through the establishment of parks, believing that if people were surrounded by natural beauty, it would inspire morality, making them better citizens.

Anderson is happy to be receiving an award for her work, but explains she would be involved in the community no matter what.

“It’s what I do,” she said of her community outreach. She is a member of the Hamilton Historical Board, Hamilton Arts Council, and the Tower Poetry Society.

Her Alumni Hamilton Community Impact Award is one of three awarded this year, presented at the Art Gallery of Hamilton on Sept. 25.

The other recipients were Dr. Jean Clinton, for her work in public and non-profit health intiatives, and Laurie Kennedy and Dr. Dyanne Semogas from the School of Nursing, for their leadership in the McMaster Student Outreach Collaborative.