Alana Cline is a Toronto-based Celtic fiddler who combines Irish, Cape Breton and Scottish styles to create her own sounds. Her father, Leigh Cline, also based in Toronto, is a guitarist, producer and sound engineer. Alana had her heart set…
In the sixth and final spring talk, Sarah Milroy, chief curator of the McMichael Collection, offered a tantalizing glimpse of the gallery’s upcoming blockbuster show featuring Canadian female artists in the interwar period. What a treat!
Our Spring Talk on May 12 featured Dr. Robin Elliott, University of Toronto, Faculty of Music, presenting “Music and Propaganda during World War II.”
Why is there anti-Black racism? And what can be done about it? These questions formed the engaging focal points of Patrick Case’s Spring Talk. It was a timely topic and it attracted widespread interest.
Academy members who braved an icy St. George Street for the Winter Forum on January 30, 2019 were treated to a fascinating conversation entitled Backstage at Koerner Hall with Mervon Mehta, Executive Director of Performing Arts for the Royal Conservatory of Music. During that conversation we heard tantalizing snippets about how the superb acoustics of the hall were achieved.
The second Spring Talk featured Fraser Thomson, a lawyer with Ecojustice Canada, who described how he and his fellow lawyers are using the legal process to fight for the environment. Two general crises face us, one being the climate crisis of global warming as exemplified by the image on an emaciated polar bear on a small ice floe. The second is the human crisis that follows as the elderly and marginalized communities are disproportionately impacted by heat waves, smoke from wildfires, spread of infectious diseases once found only in the tropics, forced migration, and increased extreme weather events.
I’m sure many of us hoped that after the Biden inauguration we had heard the last of Donald Trump. Of course, that was not to be. The first Academy talk of the spring season was an excellent analysis of Trump from an unusual perspective and a few predictions of what we might expect in the future. The talk was given by Dr. Robert Bothwell, Gluskin Professor of Canadian History at the University of Toronto. Dr. Bothwell is a much-published specialist in Canadian political, diplomatic and military history. He is also a knowledgeable, thought-provoking and entertaining speaker. I am not an historian or particularly politically astute but I have been fascinated by Trump, how he got to be President and what his legacy is likely to be, apart from being judged the worst President in the history of the United States. I was therefore very interested in what Dr. Bothwell had to say.
Our speaker for the March 17th forum was Michael Nicin who is Executive Director of the National Institute on Ageing (NIA), a think tank at Ryerson University dedicated to research in action and public education on issues affecting Canada’s ageing population.
David Phillips presented “The Nobel Peace Prize between the Wars.”
Annelise Jorgensen presented “How Exercise Boosts your Memory, The Dracula Story.”
Mohammed Bakir presented “Dictatorship to Democracy: The Case of Iraq.”
Contemporary Chinese Espionage was the focus of one of the Academy’s Winter Forums. The speaker was Olivier Courteaux, who holds a doctorate in Contemporary International Relations from the University of Paris-Sorbonne. He has also lectured in Canada at Ryerson University…