On Sunday, The Word on the Street festival ยญโ a nationwide celebration of books and magazines โ came to Kitchenerโs Victoria Park.
This event marked Kitchenerโs eighth year hosting the event.
Lined up throughout the park were numerous white tents set up for lectures, storytelling and book displays.
Among these were the Kitchener Public Library tent, PostScript Comics tent and the multicultural tent.
People of all ages came for the chance to explore cartoon fantasies, imaginary worlds, captivating dramas and various religions.
Exploring Scientology
Dianetics is the collection of ideas and customs practiced by scientologists.
Serge, who was unwilling to provide his full name, manned the dianetics tent. He was reluctant to provide any information aside from encouraging people to take a free stress test and read the book.
โThe book can answer all your questions,โ he said.
There was only one book at this tent โ Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health by the founder of Scientology L. Ron Hubbard.
Reading to children
โA big part of the festival every year has been the childrenโs tent where we highlight childrenโs authors and illustrators and give kids the opportunity to meet real authors,โ explained Laura Reed, the childrenโs tent co-ordinator from the Kitchener Public Library.
This year there were seven childrenโs authors, all of whom are Canadian, doing readings at the tent.
One such author, Marla Stewart Konrad, read two of her stories to a group of children at the booth.
At the end of Konradโs stories, Reed spoke about the success of the childrenโs tent, exclaiming that โthe kids are having a great time. Weโre so happy about getting them excited about books.โ
Creation, science and biblical information
John Soish, a firefighter whoโs been a community reader at the childrenโs tent for the past five years, has branched out and set up the creation, science and biblical information tent.
There were a number of books on display, including the Bible.
Books explaining the compatibility of science and Christianity were also available.
โWe have all kinds of creation science books,โ said Soish. โThey go through all kinds of scientific information, talking about whatโs actually scientific, whatโs theory and what has been proven wrong.โ
Soishโs feels that, โMost people who believe in creation actually love science.โ
Alternative magazine
Sam Nabi, a second-year urban planning student at the University of Waterloo, volunteered his time to man the Alternatives Journal tent.
Alternatives Journal is UWโs environment-centred magazine, which was founded in 1971. It publishes six issues per year.
โWe publish scholarly articles in a magazine format about different environmental issues,โ explained Nabi.
This magazine, which is distributed nationwide, hopes to expand its readership by raising awareness beyond the academic community.
SOFREE (Society of Ontario Freethinkers tent)
โSOFREE is a humanist organization, which is a life stance of atheists, agnostics and non-believers,โ said Doug Thomas, SOFREEโs secretary.
โAs humanists, we are concerned with human rights, animal rights, ecology.โ
He explained that the purpose of the tent is to provide freethinking literature to anyone whoโs interested.
Thomas said that SOFREE does not consider themselves a religious group because โreligions have dogma.โ
โThey require you to say, โOkay I believe that, I accept that without question.โ
Thomas says that the society consists of free thinkers who believe that since there is no God humans are ultimately responsible for whatever happens to them.
โAs far as we know, weโre evolved to be the most intelligent beings on the planet.
โOf course, that instantly separates intelligence from wisdom when you think about some of the things weโve done,โ he stated.