S t e p h e n B e d i n g f i e l d
Stephen Bedingfield resides in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories having lived in the Canadian North since the mid-1970's with his wife Lynn. Stephen served twenty years as the executive director of a social housing agency at the municipal level in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut (1981-2001), while receiving his Diploma in Municipal Administration from McMaster's University. This was followed by a three-year stint with the Nunavut Employees Union as a regional service officer (2001-2004), followed by a transfer to Public Service Alliance of Canada as a negotiator (2004-2015). He is now retired from the workplace.Stephen was instrumental in founding the Northern Employee Benefits Services, a not-for-profit corporation providing pension and group insurance products to Northerners, and he served on the Board of Directors and pension committee of NEBS, and its predecessor organization, from 1997 to 2012.
His interests include computer networking (an early adopter in 1982); corresponding with friends; astronomy (Life Member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, participation in the American Association of Variable Star Observers ID Code: BSI, participant in the SETI@home experiment, founder of the Bahá'í SETI workgroup, participant in Einstein@home, participant in StarDust@home, an avid listener of Let's Talk Stars, attending star parties (SSSP) and chasing solar eclipses (Libya 2006, Nunavut 2008, Japan 2009, Tahiti 2010, Arizona 2012, Queensland 2012, Ethiopia 2013, North Atlantic 2015); traveling (~40 countries); theatre and performing arts (past Director on the Board of the Northern Arts & Cultural Centre (NACC) 2005-2008, and volunteer; listening to music (eclectic tastes ranging from classical to country to rock to roots to jazz) and supporting live music in Yellowknife; art appreciation (abstract expressionism, figures); life drawing; Bahá'í studies; and his hometown history (Life Member of The Lost Villages Historical Society).
Stephen's Bahá'í service experience includes serving on Local Spiritual Assemblies and their committees, regional teaching committees, as an Assistant to the Auxiliary Board, and as a Representative of Huqúqu'lláh, as an itinerant teacher in Canada and abroad (Cuba, Greece, Greenland, Hawai'i, North Ireland, Republic of Ireland, Soviet Union, United States), on a project to translate Bahá'í texts into Inuinnaqtun, producing the first Inuinnaqtun Bahá'í CD and the first Dené Bahá'í CD, and defending human rights, especially the accommodation of members of minority faith communities and beliefs in the workplace to meet their religious obligations.
Email: stephen@SkyRiver.ca
Skype: skyriverguy
Through the years...
