Canada: Stories of Collecting Signatures on Postcards

Written by a Falun Dafa Practitioner in Toronto

Since September 2002, Falun Dafa practitioners in Toronto, along with practitioners from other places in Canada, began a one-and-a-half-month activity "to collect signatures and rescue our family members." Over twenty thousand postcards continuously flowed from Toronto to the Canadian Prime Minister's office.

During this signature-collection activity, practitioners not only took to the streets, joining in gatherings at all the public events to collect signatures from the passersby, they also contacted various labour unions and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), appealing for their support of our signature-collection activity. More than forty labour unions and NGOs participated in our activity. Some touching stories of this activity follow.

The president of an automobile workers labour union was very busy in his daily routines. After practitioners had tried for over one month to contact him, we finally got the chance to talk with him over the phone. We told him about our signature-collection activity, upon which he happily accepted twenty postcards and agreed to have his office staff sign them. When two practitioners brought the postcards to his office and further clarified the truth to him, he became so angry over the Jiang regime's persecution of the kind-hearted Falun Gong practitioners that he then asked for all two hundred postcards. He offered to distribute them among the members of his labour union, and also said he would personally write letters to the Prime Minister and to the Governor of Ontario, appealing for their help in stopping the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners.

The executive president of a women's organisation immediately asked for six hundred postcards after learning of our signature-collection activity. She and her colleagues collected about two hundred signatures on the postcards within three hours. She also brought the rest of the postcards with her to the out-of-town conferences that she attended and helped collect more signatures. At one conference, she met the head of the government workers labour union, and asked him to sign his name. He could not help smiling and said, "Just prior to attending this meeting, I wrote a letter to the Prime Minister on behalf of our labour union, appealing for his help in rescuing these Falun Gong practitioners."

One day, a practitioner received a phone call from a teacher's union staff member, who said that she had been entrusted by the labour union president to ask us for two hundred postcards. When a practitioner went to deliver the postcards, the head of this labour unit explained that there would soon be a nationwide union conference, hosted by his labour union, which would be attended by the presidents of many labour unions. They wanted to distribute these postcards to the conference attendees, and collect their signatures on them.

When one practitioner called a certain non-governmental organisation on her lunch break, they immediately requested five hundred postcards and Falun Gong information materials, since they would be attending a large-scale international conference with thousands of participants. They agreed to display our postcards and truth-clarifying materials in their exhibition booth during the conference.

There are still many other touching stories, the results of which are closely related to the participation and great efforts many practitioners who volunteered to contact the labour units and NGOs. They all had full-time jobs, but still made use of their ten-minute lunch breaks to clarify the truth to these organisations and send them the postcards. Other practitioners involved in this activity spared time from their busy schedules and other Falun Dafa projects to deliver the postcards in person and to further clarify the truth to them, achieving very good results. We all cooperated very harmoniously with one another, thus upgrading ourselves as a whole body during this signature-collection activity.