LOVE WINS: Dedicated couple team with WRCF to spread message that Heart Beats Hate
Back when what is now Waterloo Region Community Foundation (WRCF) was being formed some 40 years ago, Alan Quarry, who was brought in to help with marketing and branding, walked into a meeting and broke the ice with a light-hearted, well-timed joke.
What followed was an explosion of laughter in the boardroom – and the beginning of a long and successful relationship between Quarry and WRCF that continues today.
Alan and his wife, Susan Quarry, have spent the bulk of their adult lives volunteering their time, energy, and business acumen to WRCF. Whether it has been Susan’s volunteering on the Community Grants Committee and Children & Youth Committee, or Alan’s involvement with the Marketing Committee and gift-in-kind donation of producing WRCF’s Annual Impact Report courtesy of his business, Quarry Integrated Communications (he recently sold the company), the pair has always lent a helping hand.
“It's just something we do. It's a bit of time investment, but the rewards are so much more,” Susan said of their reasons for wanting to give back to the community they call home.
“You’re either a helper or you’re not,” Alan added.
They say giving back is an “unconscious” reflex, “innate” for them both.
The couple’s desire to help others has even extended to Alan donating a life insurance policy to WRCF.
"At the time, I think it was 1984, Susan and I did not have a lot of dough to spread around. But when you think of things to give it doesn’t need to be from your bank account.”
Donating a life insurance policy doesn’t impact your financial situation today. When you transfer ownership of an existing life insurance policy to WRCF you get a tax receipt for the cash value, as well as receipts for any ongoing premium payments. When proceeds of the policy are realized, those proceeds will continue support the causes you care about long after you are gone.
“Now that we have our Heart Beats Hate Fund with WRCF, it seemed natural to have the proceeds from the life insurance policy help grow the fund,” Susan explained.
Heart Beats Hate, you ask? It should perhaps come as no surprise that Susan and Alan have been keeping rather busy with their latest cause.
Heart Beats Hate (heartbeatshate.com) is a grassroots, global movement to encourage, engage and equip others to oppose hate, and choose kindness instead.
Alan describes watching the events of the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Va., unfolding one day on TV a few years ago and feeling the need to do something about what he was seeing.
“When I saw the things happening in the U.S. particularly but not totally removed from Canada by any means -- we have the same problems -- I just thought, well, ‘OK, somebody has to do something about this.’ Wait a minute, I'm somebody, I'll do something about this,” Alan said.
Heart Beats Hate revolves around kindness, treating one another better, and in general, “starting to rethink and to relearn some of the biases we naturally come by.”
Much of the work of Heart Beats Hate begins with and is focused on children.
“Working with the young children, they're not seeing hate. They don't see gender. They don't see race. They don't see religion. It's a learned behaviour,” Susan said. “If we can get to kids that are five years old, seven years old, nine years old, to say ‘hey, wait a minute, don't be a bully, don't be a jerk’. Think about the other person. Empathy is going to be one of the keys to that.”
“Learning is, I think, the verb that saves the planet,” Alan added. “If we as a society, we as culture, we as a community, we as neighbourhoods, can learn to do things better and to be kinder and more understanding as we do them, we stand a better chance of surviving. Everything is going to be about how quickly can we learn new stuff. Can we get rid of the old stuff and get new stuff that helps us as a civilization and as a people?”
While Heart Beats Hate has attracted a global following with members from 18 different countries (membership is open to all), the movement has teamed with WRCF locally to establish the Heart Beats Hate Fund. Started in 2020, the fund has contributed to a variety of local causes including KidsAbility, Strong Start, Nutrition for Learning, The Food Bank of Waterloo Region, Send’em Off Smiling, Cycling Into The future, Food4Kids, and WRCF’s Racial Equity Fund.
“It was a natural progression to include Waterloo Region Community Foundation in our plan,” Alan said. “They’re already in play in terms of making grants and keeping records. They’re well on brand. In many ways, (the fund) was simply a convenient and simplified way of giving people a chance to donate if they want to.”
Keeping the fund predominantly local has meant the impact is palpable.
“You really know that this is helping your neighbour, your community,” Susan said. “Our impact, you see it right here.”
The husband and wife say the feedback to Heart Beats Hate, and the Heart Beats Hate Fund, has been overwhelmingly positive. As part of the movement, Alan has personally delivered some 1,000 lawn signs featuring the slogan ‘Let’s All Be Kinder’ to residents throughout the region, and they regularly receive calls from people elsewhere in Canada and beyond who are interested in creating their own chapter of the movement, something the couple is open to working towards.
“We're getting the interest and now we have to leverage that,” Alan said.
Heart Beats Hate does not have any organized religious affiliation and is non-political.
If you would like to learn more about the Heart Beats Hate Fund, please contact WRCF at 519-725-1806 or info@wrcf.ca.
For more information on how life insurance donations work, contact Dan Robert at dan@wrcf.ca or 519-725-1806 x 205. If you would like to learn more about other ways to give, visit www.wrcf.ca/ways-to-give.