Fonds MS-15-5 - Anne Bishop fonds

Anne Charlotte Bishop is an activist, author, educator, food security advocate, labour organizer and community development worker. Since the 1980s she has advocated for LGBTQ rights, union organization, equity and anti-racist policies in the province of Nova Scotia.

In the 1970s she attended the University of Toronto's Centre for Christian Studies, where she was introduced to social analysis and collective approaches to education. In 1979 she worked on the People's Food Commission, a participatory research project that held hearings across Canada on issues of food security. In the 1980s she helped to organize a union of predominantly female workers at a Pictou County fish plant. In the summer of 1987, she joined Dalhousie University's Henson College as the coordinator of the Community Development and Outreach Unit. From 1987-1992 Bishop played a central role in Lesbian and Gay Rights Nova Scotia (LGRNS), which successfully lobbied the provincial government for the inclusion of sexual orientation in the Nova Scotia Human Rights Act. As an adult educator, she helped to develop a course on grassroots leadership development and wrote two influential books on consciousness-raising, anti-oppression organizational change and allyship. With Brenda Beagan, she founded a women's chorus, The Secret Furies. Bishop is currently an organic farmer in rural Nova Scotia with her partner Jan.