Press Release
After more than a decade of self-imposed isolation, people are once again turning to community groups and fraternal associations for personal contact and fellowship, says the leader of Ontario’s nearly 50,000 Freemasons.
Raymond Daniels, who will be in Fort Frances on Friday and Saturday to visit the lodge and attend a reception in his honour, says Freemasonry is enjoying something of a revival. More than 1,300 men are joining the organization each year in the province.
“We’re getting out of that syndrome we had in the 1990s when nobody joined anything,” he said. “People are realizing there is something special to be gained by getting together with their fellows.”
Communication through computers, blackberries and photo-phones remains impersonal, yet has become part of our way of life. That is why Daniels, in the second year of a two-year term as Grand Master, said he is stressing technological and structural change within the organization to ensure it continues to serve its members as it should.
But like churches, service clubs and other community groups, none of that can replace face-to-face contact with people who share the same sense of values, he said. Daniels was the driving force behind the Sankey Centre for Masonic Studies at Brock University, which will explore the role of voluntary associations in Canada’s social development.
Freemasonry is the world’s oldest and largest fraternal organization. Today, there are more than four million Masons worldwide, half of them in North America. Any man who becomes a Mason is taught a pattern for living—reverence, morality, kindness, honesty, dependability and compassion.
