David Taplin, active at WCUF in the late 1960s and 1970s:

I was introduced to WCUF by KD and Gladys Srivastava, Kon and Hala Piekarski, Bob and Elsie Whitton, Bruce and Alison Torrie, Lynn Watt, Carol Farkas, and others after joining (from India & Australia) the new and burgeoning University of Waterloo in 1968. I was a member of the very diverse WCUF during my years as a UW professor 1968-1982, much appreciating the warm family and open, intellectually lively fellowship. Bob Whitton was the acknowledged leader and mainspring of our Sunday morning meetings.

We decided at one point to elect a rotating chair of the programme committee each year to lead the "meetings" (with about 20 attendees in the house on Allen Street) rotating ideas around. I was chair for a year around 1973-1974 bringing in a wide range of speakers - Atheist, Ancient Greek, Mennonite, Quaker, Baha’i, Hindu, Anglican, Jewish, Humanist, Catholic, Buddhist, Freemason, TM, Muslim, Sikh - often with live music, meditation, and food associated with each philosophy. Prior to this for a year I'd been the LRY (Liberal Religious Youth) co-ordinator with the children of members on Sunday mornings (about six in the group) - which was also rotating on an annual basis.

The programme chair subsequent to me was much more political — "No More Philosophy" was the election mandate — with discussions of getting religion out of schools and such other current hot political topics in Ontario, in happy contrast to my year. We all amiably explored very diversely what the goal of WCUF was to be in the wider community - especially linked to the UW community, and indeed the farming Mennonites of the county. After 1976 I was active on Sundays with Conestoga Sailing Club and other family activities, but continued to attend sporadically, always appreciating the great warmth and free-ranging philosophical amiability of WCUF. Long may all this open, philosophical vibrancy flourish with GRU from 2021 onwards.

"Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist."
—Stephen Hawking, buried in Westminster Abbey beside Darwin & Newton.