The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/tag/robert-rudachyk/page/3)
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[Note: Today, September 6 has been declared World Goddess Day. Pagans around the globe are participating in activities that celebrate the divine feminine. To see what is happening in your area, go to the official World Goddess Day site for a listing of the 2015 registered events. For more on the day’s history, check out our previous report.]
SASKATCHEWAN – Election mania is sweeping Canada. Canadians are preparing to go to the polls Oct. 19 to elect a new Prime Minister to lead the country.
Heathen Robert Rudachyk has announced his candidacy for Canada’s Liberal Party of Saskatchewon. Rudachyk ran in 2014 and, in an interview with The Wild Hunt, talked about his goals and his work as an openly Heathen candidate. He said, “If I am able to become the candidate, I intend to run my campaign on the issues facing all Canadians, not on my faith. I will never hide who I am, but I will also not whip my hammer out in public and shove it into people’s faces.” This year, Rudachyk is running “to be elected as a Member of the Legislative Assembly ( MLA) for this seat or district as you might call it. It is for the provincial government of Saskatchewan It is essentially the provincial parliament.” The campaign was just announced, and we will have more from Rudachyk in the weeks to come.
On April 5, at 2:16am, 7-year-old Thor von Reichmuth died after a two year battle with cancer. He was at his home in the Minneapolis area, with his mother and father and surrounded by his stuffed animals. Most obituaries in The Wild Hunt are of famous authors, well known teachers, or founders of a Pagan Tradition. They are of adults whose life’s work, spanning multiple decades, impacted hundreds or thousands of people in our collective religious communities. Thor didn’t have decades, but his death and the way he lived his life have deeply affected the Heathen community worldwide.
Robert Rudachyk is seeking the nomination to become the Liberal Party of Canada’s candidate for the federal riding of Saskatoon West. What makes this run for office unusual is that Rudachyk appears to be the first openly Heathen candidate to run for public office in Canada. The nomination meeting is set for November 12 and the political process is very different, and much more complex, than what may be familiar to U.S. readers. In order to be nominated as a candidate, Rudachyk needed to first collect at least $1000 in donations and get the signatures of 10% of the party members in the riding (a area similar to an American electoral district), or recruit enough new members to sign his nomination papers to meet that number. Since Rudachyk was able to do that, he then went on to fill out a detailed form about his background, financial status, education, every job and address he’s had for the last ten years, along with several work and personal references.