THIS summer's annual Board Meeting of IHEU was held for the first time ever in Canada. We met in Toronto, a very pleasant and beautiful city of which I would have liked to see much more than I was able to between sessions. However, I did get a wonderful panorama view in the CN Tower at about 350 meters. Since I have no head for heights I hated the ride up in the glass-fronted lift on the outside of the tower, but my sufferings were amply compensated.

One of the reasons we went to Toronto was that we had the opportunity to attend a very interesting conference organised by the Coalition of Secular Humanism, Atheism and Freethought (CSHAFT), right after our IHEU meetings. Its theme was 'The Good Life: A Humanist Perspective' under the motto 'The good Life is one inspired by Love and guided by Knowledge', a statement by Bertrand Russell.

As I have confessed before, Board Meetings are not my favourite pastime, but this one I found quite stimulating. We managed to deal with a long agenda without much trouble. However, since the workload of the Board continues to grow rapidly as IHEU increases activities, the Board decided to delegate more of its work to the Executive Committee. This decision was based on suggestions of Erica Schulte Nordholt, our very efficient and dedicated Director of the Secretariat in Utrecht. Thanks to her the Board Members will be able to concentrate more on questions of policy.

At the beginning of the Board Meeting Paul Kurtz, who has been involved with IHEU since 1968 when we held a Marxist/non-Marxist Humanist Dialogue in Vienna, and who served on the Executive Committee for the past seven years, announced that he was standing down as Co-President. We will certainly miss him in that capacity, but fortunately we can still count on him for advice. Also he will still be 'working' for IHEU through his activities (among many others) as head of Prometheus Books, the world's leading humanist publishing company, and of the Council for Democratic Secular Humanism (CODESH), an American humanist group with 20,000 supporters. Now that Paul has retired as professor of philosophy, he is actually busier than ever.

To fill the vacancy a Nominating Committee was appointed which will collect suggestions for a new Co-President (to be sent in before October 1 to the Utrecht office) and then make a proposal to the Board. In the mean time, Paul will stay on the Executive Committee until the end of 1994, while a successor is chosen.

From the outcome of our discussions I would like to mention the following items:

- six organisations were accepted as new IHEU members; Bihar Rationalist Society (India); Dravidian Association (India); Human Horizons, Television and Radio Productions (U.K.), Humanism and Solidarity (Zaire); Freethinkers Society (Poland); Ulster Humanist Association (Northern Ireland); Union of Rationalists, Atheists and Agnostics (Italy);

- plans were approved for a development programme which will be put into effect, using a grant from HIVOS (the Dutch Humanist Institute for Development Cooperation) of NLG 100,00 a year. As well as supporting groups and projects in developing countries, the programme will develop a system of regional networking that will enable humanist activists to be involved even if there is not yet a group in their country. For example, a Latin American Network will operate out of Mexico, producing a humanist magazine to cover the whole of the Spanish-speaking America --which can, of course, be circulated in Spain as well;

- proposals by our Secretary for Development and PR, Matt Cherry, for an individual membership drive were accepted. So were his plans for encouraging partnerships between member organisations -- for which he will prepare extensive information packs.

ONE of the CSHAFT conference sessions I attended was the workshop 'Dealing with the Religious Right', led by Mary Castle, Vice President of the Atheist Alliance in the US, who is a passionate activist for human rights. There we discussed methods for lobbying in local and national political issues (e.g. make the indifferent get out of their lethargy and vote: the fundamentalists always do). We also exchanged experiences we had in more personal social settings: do you want/dare to try and get your acquaintances to join a humanist group?

Coming from the Netherlands where it is quite normal to be a humanist -- for public figures as well -- I was again shocked when hearing about the terrible problems secularists, humanists and atheists are still having in many American communities. Humanism there is equal to communism, moral depravity, and everything else under the sun that is sinful and 'un-American'. I remember being told on an earlier occasion that quite a number of academics, particularly in the South, could only receive humanist literature if it was sent to them in a plain envelope, otherwise they would be in trouble with their universities. In Toronto I forgot to ask if this was still the case, but judging from the stories Mary told us I can imagine it still is in some places. In Canada, humanism is not very popular either, although there does not appear to be such a strong opposition from the fundamentalist Christians as in the US. Maybe there will be once the Canadian humanists get more influence!

After the meetings in Toronto I went with a group of Board Members and participants of the CSHAFT conference to Buffalo, to the headquarters of CODESH. There our host, Paul Kurtz, showed us the premises and gave us the chance to rummage about in the large stockroom of Prometheus Books. Since book stores have always been my favourite shops I, like many others in our group, left loaded with stacks of literature.

In the office we were shown an architect's model of the impressive new headquarters complex, to be called 'The Center for Inquiry', part of which, i.e. the present building, is already there. When completed The Center will also house libraries, reading rooms, seminar and other meeting rooms, and audio-video production equipment. Because it is situated next to one of the main entrances to the Amherst Campus of State University of New York, students there are within easy reach of all its facilities. And I hope they will come in great numbers for we do need young people to absorb humanist ideas and to help realise them for the future.