“Every year, there’s some new challenge that comes up while organizing Toronto Rathayatra, and we joke that Lord Jagannath always throws us a curveball,” says Rukmini Dasi, co-chair of the Rathayatra Committee. Little did they know, however, that 2020 would bring the ultimate curveball – a global pandemic that required people to social distance from each other and saw all gatherings and public festivities banned.
Seventeen children and youth, aged two to eighteen, took three months to complete the movie and worked on every part of the production from set building, special effects, and lighting, to voices, puppeteering, filming and editing. The film premiered in Saranagati on Christmas Day to rave reviews.
Students of Govardhana Academy in Saranagati, Canada have baked and distributed 5,500 prasadam cookies to businesses, services and friends in the surrounding towns as a gesture of goodwill this Christmas season.
The event took place at the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish, a Catholic Church in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Held on October 4th– the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi – it honored the saint with the theme “Instruments of Peace,” a phrase from his famous prayer.
In the U.S., SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment, which has SeaWorld parks in California, Florida and Texas, announced in 2016 that it would stop breeding captive killer whales and shift its focus to marine mammal rescue operations.
In a holistic and visionary way, what are the deepest needs and hungers of family, of community, of society, of the world? We know when women’s voices are silenced a door opens for children and women themselves to become abused.
Nearly 10,000 delegates from 80 countries attended the 2018 Parliament of the World’s Religions from November 1stto 7thin Toronto, Canada. They represented nearly 200 religious, spiritual and indigenous traditions, comprising the single largest interfaith gathering in the world.
The Parliament of the World’s Religions, the largest global interfaith gathering, will be held in Toronto from November 1 – 7 in Toronto, Canada. The gathering will welcome close to 10,000 delegates from 80 countries, representing nearly 200 religious, spiritual, and Indigenous traditions.
Hundreds of devotees recently gathered at ISKCON Montreal, Canada to celebrate the 50thanniversary of Srila Prabhupada’s Summer in Montreal, when he spent three months from June to August of 1968 in the city.
Christmas 2017. Toronto, Canada was colder than the North Pole, dropping to -22C for the first time in recorded history. Schools closed. People stayed home from work. Outdoor New Year’s Eve celebrations were canceled. The roads were treacherous. But none of this stopped ISKCON Toronto devotees from venturing out to deliver Srila Prabhupada’s books during the six-week Prabhupada marathon, from November 19th to December 31s
One of Canada's fasting rising young opera stars, Dustin Hiles, first met the devotees seven years ago in Winnipeg, MB, while campaigning as a candidate for the provincial Liberal Party of Canada.
Amala Kirtan Das.
Govardhana Academy, located at the Saranagati Farm Community in British Columbia (BC), Canada, recently participated in their third year of the BC Green Games - a province wide competition to promote sustainability in schools. One of the biggest challenges of farming at Saranagati is their short growing season. With a self-heated greenhouse, they intend to grow food year-round. Using money from a previous grant award, the materials were purchased and the students and their community teamed up to bring the design to reality.
EnChant is Kirtan Vancouver’s “bread and butter,” a kirtan, short talk, and prasadam at a yoga studio every second Saturday that attracts an impressive fifty to seventy people of all ages each time – some from different yoga paths, but many completely new to Eastern spirituality. Once advertised through Facebook, meetup.com, and physical posters, EnChant is now the most well-known kirtan event in the city, and is spread just by positive word-of-mouth.
With a sudden boom of new Krishna conscious farm projects in Central Canada, their leaders gathered to discuss how they could collaborate with each other at the first ever Central Canada Farm Conference on December 17th. Canadian GBC Bhaktimarga Swami and farmer Sukhayanti Dasi brought together twenty-six devotees from seven agrarian projects across Southern Ontario and Quebec for the conference, which took place at the King Edward Park Community Centre in Brighton, Ontario.
Elementary and some secondary school students at the Govardhan Academy in Saranagati, B.C., Canada have produced an inspirational and heartfelt puppet show film of how Srila Prabhupada founded ISKCON for ISKCON’s 50th anniversary. The forty-minute film, "Mission of Mercy," premiered at Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati’s disappearance day at the Saranagati temple on December 17th, and was very well received.
Toronto's Hare Krishna Centre (ISKCON Toronto), has always been the hub of a rich, vibrant and enthusiastic community. Whether it be grand festivals, programs at local universities and yoga studios, philosophical discussions, cooking sessions, or singing and dancing on the streets, there are events taking place for everyone's interest. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has shared a congratulatory message for the Canadian Hare Krishna communities for ISKCON's 50th Anniversary.
Bhakta Dustin, a Hare Krishna devotee, was given the honour of singing the National Anthem to open the first holiday caucus dinner of the recently elected Canadian liberal government. Newly elected Canadian Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Justin Trudeau along with his wife Mrs. Grégoire-Trudeau, affectionately known as “Sofie”, hosted the gala event of almost three thousand elite guests.
On November 21st, 2015 about 200 people braved the winter conditions to come to an interfaith meeting organized by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jam'at Canada. The theme was God: Fact or Fiction? There were four speakers: a Baptist minister, an atheist, an Ahmadiyya Muslim representative, and ISKCON member Krsnadasa Kaviraja dasa.
The Swami’s current walk, may mean the most to him on a personal level.
A small yet growing crew of dedicated devotees have been doing Harinama Sankirtana in downtown Vancouver, Canada, for over 200 days in a row now, chanting the Holy Names of God for two hours every week day after work and for three hours on weekends.
Toronto's Hare Krishna Centre (ISKCON Toronto), has always been the hub of a rich, vibrant and enthusiastic community. Whether it be grand festivals, programs at local universities and yoga studios, philosophical discussions, cooking sessions, or singing and dancing on the streets, there are events taking place for everyone's interest.
Students at ISKCON Saranagati, Canada, have topped the British Columbia Green Games winners’ lists in both the secondary and elementary school categories this year. The Green Games are run by a Vancouver center that promotes science education. To enter, students had to create and submit a photo essay, video project or website that showed an environmental action project their school had undertaken.
Students of the Govardhana Academy in Saranagati, an off-the-grid Krishna conscious village in B.C., Canada, have topped the B.C. Green Games winners’ lists in both the secondary and elementary school categories this year.
A husband and wife devotee couple are trying to live a simple life on Canada’s Prince Edward Island according to ISKCON Founder Srila Prabhupada’s instructions – with inspiring results. Gaura Nitai Das, originally from Scotland, and Lala Gopala Dasi, a Cree native from the White Bear reservation in Saskatchewan, Canada, were both initiated by Srila Prabhupada at Bhaktivedanta Manor near London in 1976.
Huddled together in sub-zero temperatures with no power during an ice storm this past holiday season, devotees in Toronto, Canada discovered the joy of simplicity and Krishna conscious association. The storm struck in the midst of book distributor Vaisesika Das’s annual “Festival of the Heart,” held from December 19th to 24th at ISKCON Toronto.
As the holiday season comes around, ISKCON devotees like to wrap up warm, pack their bags full of books by their Founder Acharya Srila Prabhupada, and head out on the streets to give the most valuable Christmas present of all: spiritual knowledge. One of the most enthusiastic ISKCON communities of recent years in this endeavor has been ISKCON of Toronto, Canada.
Quebec’s governing party introduced a legislation that would ban public employees from wearing “overt and conspicuous” religious garb.
Between October 11th and 14th, ISKCON temple and project leaders from across Canada met in British Columbia at a beautiful mountain conference centre for their annual Canadian Leaders Retreat.
It was we back in 1973, when followers of Krishna moved to Regina from Vancouver to set up a temple in the 13-block Retallack. What disturbed the leaders and congregation however, was the sense that the neighbourhood did not want them here. They weren’t prepared for a succession of break-ins - five in just a few years.
Toronto's Hare Krishna community recently celebrated the annual Maha-Mantra Festival. The festival involved a wide assortment of activities and events that proved to be wonderfully spiritually inspiring. This video contains some of the highlights.
This year, the 5th Annual Gopinath's Kids Camp will be held on Saturday, August 20th from 8:30am-6:00pm, strictly for kids aged 5-12 years. The purpose of this one-day camp is to provide an opportunity to ignite the spiritual spark in children while doing fun and interactive activities that they enjoy.
So far, God and religion haven't come up in the media coverage of the Vancouver Olympics, unless you count jokes about praying for snow.
Members of ISKCON Canada’s Toronto and Brampton communities have purchased a country resort which they hope will be an innovative tool for congregational development, a retirement home for senior devotees, and the first “for profit” Vaishnava retreat in North America.
Calgary's Hindus celebrated the most famous of India's festivals, the Rath Yatra Festival or Festival of Chariots, on Sept. 6. Celebrated for hundreds of years in India, it one of the oldest celebrations in the world. Millions of people arrive every year to Jagannath Puri, in eastern India, to pull the chariot on which the idols of Lord Jagannath, his brother Balabhadra and his sister Subhadra are seated.
This is Mark from Saranagati Farm in B.C. Canada. Visakha Devi-dasi and myself are organizing a tour of Europe by bicycle from Sweden to Spain in the fall of 2010. We will visit several Hare Krsna farms and temples along the way. A fee $1,000.00 will cover support vehicle and prasadam. You bring bike, sleeping arangement, helmet, etc.
Somehow, by God’s grace, I was able to complete a third walk across one of the largest land masses on earth, my home country, Canada. This third trek brings the total distance covered to 20,000 Kilometres, or, 12,427 miles. Figures might be important but more relevant is the number of people I met.