Reverend Elvis and Daughter on a Mission of Peace


[break][break][break][break][break][break][break][break][break]

Reverend Elvis used to preach at the Red Deer Lake United Church.

Reverend Elvis Bruce Sheasby and daughter Mary-Jane flew from Calgary to Mississauga to sing “You Are My Sunshine” to Mayor Hazel McCallion who was being honoured last Sunday Sept 21 International Peace Day by Bruce’s mother Dorothea Sheasby, the Canadian Registrar of World Citizens, at a Peace Stone beautifully over looking Lake Ontario, first dedicated in 2009.

Mrs. Sheasby for years had sent her son letters with the sticker “Planet BRUCE REINHOLD ELVIS SHEASBY (YOUR GRACE LAND) - Reverend ElvisEarth is Our Home , Humanity is Our Family” a saying of Mahatma Gandhi, which ultimately inspired the Reverend to write his song “Maybe its Time.” which begins with those very words and has become an anthem for the Peace Day ceremony. These words of Gandhi are also inscribed on the inspirational Peace Stone which Mayor McCallion helped Mrs. Sheasby to fulfill her dream to create.

Bruce Reinhold Elvis Sheasby is indeed an ordained minister who added Elvis to his legal name after he got the title Reverend Elvis at the time of winning the International Elvis Gospel Festival in the small town of Vauxhall, Alberta in 1997. But the Elvis connection goes back much farther as he explains with a chuckle. “I believe it was right around the time when I lived in Mississauga at around 16 years old that I went done to Hollywood on the Gong Show to sing Jailhouse Rock….… that shortly thereafter ‘Hurricane Hazel’, as I believe she’s called, took over as mayor!
I feel like we’re sort of kindred spirits as the Elvis in me, like the Hurricane in Hazel, likes to shake things up! I’ve always admired Hazel’s tenacity and vision. Hazel supported my mother in making this Peace Stone become a reality and I think that both women are a testament to the reality that Peace can be hard work and usually comes with a price.”

 

 

,