Fall Lecture Series 2023

Rachael has been recognized as a music therapist since 2001. She served as the president of the Music Therapy Association of Ontario from 2010-2014 and was the recipient of the YWCA Woman of Distinction Award, for Healthcare in 2015. Rachael brought 2 music therapy courses to McMaster University in 2010 and currently educates over 2000 students each academic year about music therapy. To provide further education to the community and healthcare professionals Rachael founded the Music Therapy Academy.

Rachael started her graduate studies in Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour in September 2019. Her research focus is the use of music therapy for proactive wellness.

David has led monthly family history and DNA testing workshops in the Niagara-on-the-Lake Public Library since 2015. He has also researched searchable databases for those 8500 British Home Children who came through Niagara-on-the-Lake and Hamilton from the late 1860s to the early 1930s.

Colleen Smith is a Canadian arts leader, former musician and educator with expertise that spans strategic planning, organizational development, financial management, brand development and producing large-scale events and live performances. She has had national and international executive leadership experience, and led teams at Theatre Calgary, one of Western Canada’s largest producing theatres, the Massey Hall Capital Revitalization Project and was co-lead on the Arts, Culture and Digital Transformation Summit at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

An MBA graduate from the Schulich School of Business, Smith worked with Newfoundland’s Gros Morne Summer Music in designing and implementing a national rollout strategy that resulted in the successful development of partnerships with the Aga Khan Museum, Humber College School for the Creative and Performing Arts and the Banff Centre.

Proudly identifying Prince Edward Island as ‘home’, she is humbled and inspired by the artists and arts colleagues that she has met through her work and gives back to the arts community through volunteer service with other non-profit organizations and mentorship programs. Since March 2020 Colleen has survived the pandemic thanks to the support of the Niagara community where she proudly represents the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre as CEO.

Tim Sayle is Associate Professor of History and the Director of the International Relations Program at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Enduring Alliance: A History of NATO and the Postwar Global Order. He has also edited books related to NATO, the war in Iraq, and Canadian nuclear history. He created the website Canada Declassified that makes once secret Canadian documents open to students and scholars around the world.

He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and is the recipient of a Killam Research Fellowship, Murray Award for Career Achievement of the Canadian Society of Microbiologists among other awards. He has trained over 75 graduate students and postdocs and is the author of over 300 manuscripts.

His research interests are in the origins and mechanisms of antibiotic resistance in the clinic and the environment and the discovery of new anti-infective strategies, focusing on the application of microbial natural products and synthetic biology towards this goal.

Dr. Vasseur is a full professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Brock University. She is a member of the Environmental Sustainability Research Centre and a Cool Climate Oenology and Viticulture Institute fellow. Since 2014, she holds the UNESCO Chair on Community Sustainability: From Local to Global.

Her interdisciplinary research program links issues such as sustainable agriculture, climate change adaptation and resilience, community-based ecosystem management, and ecosystem governance. Her research is in Canada, China, Ecuador, and Africa.

In Canada, major projects focus on sustainable agriculture and climate change adaptation in rural and coastal communities, and conservation in the Niagara Biosphere, a co-governed organization with Indigenous and non-indigenous people.

She is deputy chair of the Commission for Ecosystem Management at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (and co-lead of the Climate Change and Biodiversity Policy and Practice group), co-editor-in-chief of Botany at the Canadian Science Publishing, member of the executive board of Nature Canada, and former President of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO.