Lecture

Join the inaugural Scotland-Canada Academic Partnership Lecture delivered by Professor Robert Dunbar, University of Edinburgh on Zoom.

Gaelic has been spoken for perhaps 1,500 years or more in Scotland, and for over 250 years in what is now Canada. Many Scots are not aware of how widely spoken Gaelic once was in Scotland, and most Canadians are unaware of the fact that at the time of Confederation, Gaelic was likely the third most widely-spoken language in Canada. 

Register for the link.

Dr. Geoff Bird presents his new film, Ways We Remember War: The Battle of Second Ypres and Canada’s Memory, exploring how art, memorials and pilgrimage shape our understanding of Canada’s first battle of the First World War.  Lt. Col. John McCrae is represented in the film, along with artwork from the Canada War Museum, the Brooding Soldier in Belgium, and the landscape of war in Flanders.

Join DRAGEN Lab for an in-person lecture by Dr. Brian D. Lewis from McGill University. George Cecil Ives (1867-1950) was a scion of the English gentry, a sexologist and a criminologist who founded a clandestine “gay rights” organization, the Order of Chaeronea, in the 1890s. More significantly for the historian, he wrote a massive diary, observing and chronicling a sexual revolution: the period when new categories of sexual and gendered identity crystallized in a complex interplay between emerging sexological science and queer subjects. This paper aims to capture the Ivesian bricolage, in context, during this time of momentous change.

The Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940 was the greatest aerial battle in history. In this talk at Laurier Centre for the Study of Canada, Ted Barris uncovers the unknown stories of Canadian airmen, ground crew, as well as engineers, aeronautical designers, medical officers and civilians who answered the call and turned back the very real threat of Nazi invasion. Barris is an award-winning journalist, author, broadcaster and author of 22 best-selling non-fiction books.

Laurier Centre for the Study of Canada, together with Guelph Museums, presents a lecture by Lieutenant-Colonel Miguel A. Ortiz-Sosa, CD, the commanding officer of Guelph's 11th Field Regiment.

Donald Trump wants Canada to be his 51st State. He isn’t the first American leader to think that way, and he won’t be the last. At the Laurier Centre for the Study of Canada (LCSC), Norman Hillmer, a leading historian of the Canadian-American relationship, reflects on how Canada resisted the United States in the past, and he asks whether and how much present challenges are different from yesterday’s.

Laurier Centre for the Study of Canada, together with Guelph Museums, presents author Douglas Hunter. Hunter explores the role of the First World War in the life and career of artist A.Y. Jackson, and its impact on the formation of Canada’s most famous art collective, the Group of Seven.

Henry Tsang, visual and media artist from Vancouver, talks about his 360˚ Riot Walk project and book, White Riot: The 1907 Anti-Asian Riots in Vancouver.

Wilfrid Laurier University professor, Leonard Friesen presents a special lecture series celebrating the publication of his book, Mennonites in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union: Through Much Tribulation (University of Toronto Press, 2022). Sponsored by the Institute of Anabaptist and Mennonite Studies. This is the second in the series. Consider attending the first lecture.

Wilfrid Laurier University professor, Leonard Friesen presents the first lecture in a series celebrating the publication of his book, Mennonites in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union: Through Much Tribulation (University of Toronto Press, 2022). Sponsored by the Institute of Anabaptist and Mennonite Studies. Consider attending the second lecture.