"The Stars Belong to Everyone" was the theme of the 2021 General Assembly. A most famous phrase by our beloved Helen Sawyer Hogg. But what does it mean for the RASC in 2021 and beyond? At its roots, it is simple in nature and easy to understand, but in the context of the 21st Century, it becomes a deep and thoughtful exercise. Looking back to early 2020, our normality was shocked by a military action against a civilian airliner, taking the lives of innocent victims, many from the Canadian scientific community and almost all of those from what we might consider under-represented and marginalized elements of society. Then our normalcy was shattered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Modern science developed responsive vaccines in record time, likely saving millions of lives, while some segments of society propagated conspiracy theories about the source, the response, the threat and on and on and on. Anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, and others of their ilk continue to make headlines. The war between science and belief rages on. And then George Floyd happened. His murder and the brutality that led to it was sadly not something we hadn't heard of before, but in this time and place, and in this self-professed level of "civilization," it was too much. Black Lives Matter became the underlying conceptual message of the oppressed, the marginalized, and the under-represented.
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