Skipping Stones: Why Craig Barlow Is Investing in Living Humanism with Intention
This fall, Humanist Canada launched the first restricted campaign in its history: Living Humanism with Intention: Conversations for a Compassionate, Rational Society. It exists because one member decided not to wait.
Craig Barlow, in honour of his late wife Rhoda Williamson, has donated $21,934 in 2026. That founding gift covers close to half of the program’s first year and set this campaign in motion.
Craig has been a life member of Humanist Canada since 2021. He recently wrote down the roads that led him to make this investment, and we’re sharing his reflection here, lightly edited, alongside a poem he wrote in 2025. Together they say, better than we could, why this work matters right now.
The Road to Humanism
I didn’t arrive at humanism quickly. I grew up in a Christian Science household, believed in God well into adulthood, and joined the First Unitarian Congregation in Ottawa in 2000. A program there, an invitation to identify what you actually believe and then attempt to live it, set me on a process of reading, thinking and discussing. I deconstructed and rebuilt my life philosophy more than once.
Three years of this led me to a conclusion that surprised me: I was an atheist. What I needed next was a community whose moral framework I could stand behind. Humanism offered me what religion once provided, without the God I could no longer accept. To me, humanism is a way to determine what is moral and how to live ethically, as an individual, within a community and in the world. By 2018, my road had led me to Humanist Canada. In 2021, I became a life member.
From Charitable Giving to Social Investing
When I turned 65, I set up a $25,000 charitable trust called “Gift It Forward.” It made some of my annual donations, and on my death it would pass to my niece and nephew, so they would hopefully remember me as a good guy. Oh, the vanity of the ego.
Then in 2020, I read that charities were receiving fewer donations because of COVID. I asked myself why I was holding onto this trust and distributing only 5% a year. I couldn’t think of a valid reason. So I collapsed the trust and split it equally among Humanist Canada, Yellowhead Institute, Farm Radio International and Paul Dewar’s Youth Action Now. I thought my days of giving large donations, at least large for me, were over. I was wrong.
Over time, I realized that charitable giving did not reflect my intent. I am a social investor. I took inspiration from the Islamic concept of Zakat, which calls for giving 2.5% of accumulated wealth above a certain threshold, and concluded that my surplus wealth is not really mine to hold. That leaves only two questions: what is my surplus wealth, and where should I invest it? I also decided I would rather give with a living hand, and see how my investments benefit others, than give with a dead hand from the grave.
As a 74-year-old white, male, cisgender baby boomer, I have received unearned benefits from Canadian society over the years. So I have a particular responsibility to live out one of my humanist values: not a bucket list, but a builder’s list. In economic terms, that means converting my surplus net worth into social worth while I am alive.
Skipping Stones
Imagine you have taken a road to your favourite pond, lake or seashore to skip stones. The water is our community. The stones are its building blocks, and the ripples are the results of the actions we take when we skip them.
There are five stones each of us can skip: time, skills, values, ideas and money. Over my life I have tried to skip as many as I can. But the time has come for me, as a baby boomer, to skip the money stone. Society needs this investment now if we are going to have any chance of building a better world for the children and young people of today. Future generations expect it of us.
Please understand, I am not being generous. I am being a rational social investor, applying my humanist values to my personal, family and financial circumstances. My grandfather and my father risked their lives as young men in the First and Second World Wars. The financial risk of skipping my money stone doesn’t compare. But that risk needs to be taken up by those of us who can, if our community, our country and our world are going to flourish, today and for the generations we will never know.
Why This Program
The four parts of Living Humanism with Intention, dialogue, learning, youth and resources, address what the humanist community must take on if humanism in Canada is going to become a sustainable, effective values framework. We need that framework to build ethical, practical solutions to the serious problems we face, and to make humanism more widely known, accepted and intentionally lived.
I believe organized humanism today skews too individualistic, too closed, and too comfortable with debate as a substitute for real dialogue. “Getting humanists together is like herding cats” is a phrase I have heard many times. I don’t think that’s a strength. I think it’s our Achilles’ heel. I agree with Ubuntu, the South African philosophy: I am because we are. We are not individuals sitting in silos. We are in this world together.
A program built around listening, discussing and learning what our values are, and how to apply them to today’s ethical questions, matters for humanity’s survival and flourishing. Just as important is recognizing our blind spots, in our thinking, our culture, our history and our personal experiences, because we all have them. At least sometimes, we must put on the veil of ignorance, as John Rawls proposed.
We are living in a hinge moment of history. This program will fortify us, as individuals and as a community, to meet this moment of rupture and change. Success is not guaranteed, but it is better to be prepared and face the challenges head on than to let the future unfold without us. Simply put: we must intentionally live our humanist values, or we will cowardly submit.
Stone 660
Craig asks himself these questions every day.
What values do we
Humanist live
To ask
“Who have we forgotten?”*
“What have we forgotten?”*
What values do we
Humanists live
To step forward
And help
Those in need?
What values do we
Humanists live
To sit
And talk
With strangers?
What values do we
Humanists live
To die
On the battlefield
Of right vs. wrong?
What values do we
Humanists live
To create
Communities
Where all belong?
What values do we
Humanists live
To meet
The challenges
Of our time?
What Values
We Humanist
Daily Live
Is the Rhythm
Of our Lives
… & ~~~π
CdBarlow.2025-26. What Values?
* Dr. Anthony Pinn, Episode 26, How to Humanist podcast, hosted by Shay Leonia (AHA)
Live Fully
Statistics Canada tells me that, as a man of 74, I have about ten years left to live, though I know death can come at any time. Last year, my wife Rhoda died. One of the last pearls of wisdom she shared with me was this: live fully.
My social investment of $21,934 in this program is helping me live my humanist values fully. I hope the ripples from this stone will help other humanists do the same.
If you have read this far, thank you. It should not surprise you that I have one ask: invest in Humanist Canada’s Living Humanism with Intention program. It will help each of us to know our values and see the roads we need to travel, if we are going to live those values intentionally before it is too late.
Our community, our country and our world will become better for all, one step at a time, if you do.
Rationally yours,
Craig D. Barlow )'(
Now It Is time For You To Add Your Stone
Craig’s gift started the ripple. Now we need our community to carry it outward.
Polarization is rising, trust is eroding, and many Canadians, especially younger ones, are facing hard ethical questions without a shared framework or a community to work through them with. Living Humanism with Intention is our response: monthly “Through a Humanist Lens” dialogues, facilitated learning circles, a youth track, and a free public resource hub open to every Canadian.
Year 1 of the program costs $45,000. Craig’s founding gift has us started, and we’re asking our community to raise the remaining $25,000 by November 30. [So far, we’ve raised $15,153.84 .]
Every gift, from $5 to $5,000 and beyond, makes you part of the founding community behind this program, and every donor is recognized equally. You can give once for Year 1, or make an annual commitment to keep these conversations going.
When you give, we’ll ask you one question: in a few words, why does this conversation matter to you right now? When the campaign closes, we’ll bring every answer together into a word map, a portrait of the people who made this program possible.
Give to Living Humanism with Intention →
Craig’s decision to invest in this program was inspired in part by Janalee Morris’s article “Living Your Values Intentionally”, which explores turning net worth into social worth, and why we need community to live our values intentionally. It was published on the Humanist Canada website on May 27, 2026.