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