Transformative Moments in Chaplaincy
by Donald Stoesz and Joan Palardy

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The book celebrates Rev. Dr. Pierre and Judy Allard’s fifty years of reconciliation ministry by weaving their life experiences within broader initiatives started within Canada and overseas. Three quality moments of time, referred to as kairotic events within the contemporary history of corrections and chaplaincy, are identified. The rise of prison visitation and ex-offender reintegration organizations across Canada in the 1960s and 70s represents the first quality moment of time. Rev. Dr. Pierre Allard’s collaboration with Correctional Service Canada Commissioner Ole Ingstrup in the early 1980s in developing a new Mission Statement for the Service represents a second kairotic moment. Pierre and Judy Allard’s establishment of Just Equipping in 2006 as a response to an international call to bring about reconciliation between offenders and victims in Rwanda and other countries in Africa represents a third quality moment of time. The book analyses these three historical occasions and weaves them together with nine other Canadian chaplains’ stories of prison ministry.

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Rev. Don Stoesz is an ordained Mennonite minister who worked for thirty-five years (1987-2022) as an institutional chaplain in Quebec and Alberta. From 1998- 2007, he was a member of the Bridge Committee, which gave oversight to Calgary community chaplaincy. From 2002-2017, he was part of a Stakeholders Group that guided the establishment of Circles of Support and Accountability in Calgary. Joan Palardy served for seventeen years as a Roman Catholic chaplain at Bowden Institution in Alberta (1991-2007). She and her husband John volunteered for three months in 2010 with Just Equipping, an overseas restorative justice initiative started by Pierre and Judy Allard. Joan has published a book about her ministry, From the Heart (2018).

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Contributors

Author

Donald Stoesz

Author

Joan Palardy