I want to take a moment and provide some clarification about where donations are going. A few times now the press has inaccurately reported about our campaign and so some clarification is needed.

All donations will be spent advertising on city transit systems with the possibility of a billboard advertisement in the future but that is not part of our initial campaign. We will be advertising in Halifax, Calgary, and Toronto. We will initially be spending $10,000 in Toronto, $5,000 in Calgary, and $5,000 in Halifax. We’ve received over $30,000 in donations and so the money not spent on initial advertisements will be used to prolong the first advertisements put up or to buy new advertisements in Toronto, Calgary, and Halifax. We do not want to spend all donations at once, we want the campaign to last as long as possible and ideally we would want it to continue indefinitely.

CityTV reported today that we are going to be spending “[...] tens of thousands of dollars in donations [...] to post similar ads in Calgary and Halifax.” [1] This is an error on their part as we made it clear to them that we would only be spending $5,000 in Halifax and $5,000 in Calgary. If we receive the financial support through donations then we will spend more to prolong the advertisements.

We’re aiming to put the Toronto advertisements up around  mid-February (provided everything goes smooth in production). We are working with our contacts in Calgary and Halifax on rates and prices and we’re in the planning stages right now with regards to those two cities.

To ensure you have accurate information about the campaign please use our website, atheistbus.ca, as a primary source. I encourage you to read through the website FAQ and other pages on the website to learn more about the campaign.

Sources:

[1] – ‘No God’ Ads, Soon To Appear On TTC Vehicles, Spark Heated Debate – CityTV News -  January 29th, 2009 – http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_31470.aspx

An article was published recently in the National Post claiming that the Humanist Association of Canada and the Freethought Association of Canada have nothing in common except that we don’t believe in god. It also mentioned that we’re “rivals” and that we’re essentially fighting over who can have the best campaign.

This just simply isn’t true. HAC and FAC have no tiff with one another, especially not one that would make us “rivals”.

Two rival atheist groups will attempt to peddle their different views of non-belief to Canadians through separate advertising campaigns on public transit.

We are not rival groups. We are different groups, with different mandates and who focus on different priorities. Every organization that has called telling me they are going to do their own atheist bus campaign, I have supported whole  heartedly because it just means more buses with our messages being displayed. This is not a competition, the humanist group wants a different message than ours – and I don’t think that all freethinking groups need to be lumped into one. The more messages – the better.

The humanists doing their campaign is amazing, and I hope that this can spread even farther across Canada. The more messages, the more dialogue!

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