Winter Lecture Series 2023
Lectures will be offered virtually via Zoom webinars from 10 AM to 12 PM on Tuesdays from February 14 to March 21, 2023.
Lectures are subject to change without notice.
Managing Healthcare in a Digital World
Presented by Dr. Sacha Bhatia, Executive Lead, Population Health and Value-based Health Systems, Ontario Health
Dr. Bhatia is the Executive Lead, Population Health and Value-based Health Systems, at Ontario Health. Previously, he was the FM Hill Chair in Health Systems Solutions, the Chief Medical Innovation Officer of Women’s College Hospital (WCH), as well as the Division Head of Cardiology at WCH. A scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (IC/ES) and an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, he has been published in international peer reviewed journals like the New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA Internal Medicine. In 2013, he founded the Institute for Health System Solutions and Virtual Care (WIHV) and served as its Director until 2019. He has been a commentator on Bloomberg News, CTV News and the CBC, and has been asked to give over 100 presentations internationally, nationally and regionally over the past 6 years.
He is a recipient of the American College of Cardiology’s Young Investigator Award, the American Society of Echocardiography’s Arthur E. Weyman Young Investigator Award, and most recently the Goldie Award for Quality and Innovation and the Louise Lemieux Charles Emerging Leader award at the University of Toronto. He sits on the boards of the Heart and Stroke Foundation and DREAM Industrial REIT, a publicly traded company listed on the TSX.
Previously, he worked as a clinical and research fellow in cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University. Dr. Bhatia received his medical degree and MBA at McGill University and his internal medicine and cardiology training in Toronto.
February 21, 2023
Never a Time Without Song
Presented by Jim Payne, Songwriter, Performer and Producer, and Adventurer
Join award-winning musician and songwriter, Jim Payne, for an entertaining and informative look at how Newfoundland and Labrador’s vibrant musical culture helped to sustain community life here from the founding of the first English community at Cupids in 1610 to the present day.
From ancient ballads and dance tunes brought here by early settlers from England, Ireland and France, to locally-composed songs that reflected the circumstances of their new and changing lifestyle, the songs tell stories of the struggle to survive in an unforgiving landscape, and celebrate the joys and triumphs of creating successful communities built from the resources of land and sea.
Despite, or perhaps because of, the challenges they faced in this unfamiliar new world, there was never a time without song.
From Notre Dame Bay, Newfoundland, Jim Payne is leading performer and collector of Newfoundland traditional music, as well as one of the province’s most prolific songwriters. A multi-instrumentalist and singer who has performed on six continents, he also owns and operates his own record label, SingSong Inc., which has released over 50 titles of music that reflects the Newfoundland and Labrador experience.
An award-winning performer and producer with a string of recording credits to his name, Jim is a veteran of Rising Tide Theatre’s annual Revues and teaches courses in traditional music and song at Memorial University’s School of Music. He has also been involved in an ongoing three-decade project with Wren Music of Devon, UK, exploring and documenting the extensive historical and cultural links between our province and the West Country of England.
Jim is also an adventurer who has circumnavigated the island of Newfoundland more than 20 times, sailed through the Northwest Passage, and throughout the Canadian and Scandinavian Arctic, including Greenland, Iceland and Svalbard. He has also crossed the Southern Ocean to Antarctica several times to travel to the Antarctic Peninsula, as well as South Georgia and the Falkland Islands.
Jim is the recipient of Arts NL awards for Arts in Education and Outstanding Cultural Achievement, and was inducted into its Hall of Honour in 2016. He received the ECMA’s Stompin’ Tom Connors Award in 2017 for contributions to the cultural fabric of eastern Canada, and was one of five songwriters, and the only one from North America, to be invited to present at a symposium in Kagoshima, Japan, featuring artists whose original material becomes part of local tradition. In 2021, he was presented with Music NL’s Industry Builder Award, as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award from the St. John’s Folk Arts Society.
February 28, 2023
The (Long) Age of Creativity
Presented by Dr. Emily Urquhart, Journalist
This lecture is based on my book, The Age of Creativity, a work inspired by my father, the artist Tony Urquhart, who was born and raised in Niagara Falls. As my father aged into his eighties and continued his art practice, people seemed surprised that his creativity persisted into his later years. They often used the term ‘remarkable.’
I began to wonder why we believe that creativity declines as people age, and, employing my background in journalism and my academic training in research, I set out to discover if there was any merit to these assumptions.
In this visual lecture I will present my findings on aging and creativity through a series of personal stories and artist biographies alongside images of their late-stage art, and reveal how creative work, both amateur and professional, sustains people in the third act of their lives.
Emily Urquhart is a journalist with a doctorate in folklore. Her award-winning longform nonfiction has appeared in Guernica, Longreads and The Walrus among other publications. She is the author of Beyond the Pale: Folklore, Family and the Mystery of our Hidden Genes, a Kobo First Book Prize nominee, as well as The Age of Creativity: Art, Memory, my Father and Me, which was listed as a top book of 2020 by CBC, NOW Magazine and Quill & Quire. She has taught folklore and creative writing courses at Memorial University, Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Waterloo. She is a nonfiction editor for The New Quarterly and lives in Kitchener, Ontario. Her collection of essays, Ordinary Wonder Tales, will be published in November 2022.
March 7, 2023
Who Owns Your Grocery Store?
Presented by Jon Steinman, Author
While some have demanded more government oversight, another model of grocery store ownership is instead placing the governance of the neighborhood grocery store into the hands of the people most impacted by them – consumers. Most commonly known as ‘food co-ops’, these full-service grocery stores are owned by the communities they serve – specifically by the thousands of customers who shop at the store. Every year, those owner-customers democratically elect from among themselves a board of directors to govern the grocery store and employ its general manager. The model has been used for over 175 years but is now experiencing a resurgence of interest among communities that are looking to place this powerful institution into the hands of the people who rely on them.
Jon Steinman is the author of Grocery Story: The Promise of Food Co-ops in the Age of Grocery Giants (New Society Publishers). Following the book’s release, Jon completed a 130-stop tour across the US and Canada and was hosted by established food co-ops and 23 in their development stages. In 2021, Jon published THIS COULD BE OURS – a PHOTO ALBUM to inspire your food co-op dream.
Jon was the writer and host of the radio show, podcast and television series Deconstructing Dinner, and was a board director at the Kootenay Co-op (2006-2016) – the largest food co-op in Canada specializing in natural foods – serving as Board President in his final two years.
Jon lives in Nelson, British Columbia.
March 14, 2023
Unveiling the Cosmos: the James Webb Space Telescope
Presented by Dr. Nathalie Ouellette, Astrophysicist and Science Communicator
This project is an international collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. In addition to contributing the FGS/NIRISS instrument, Canada and its astronomers are poised to be some of the first to use the telescope and produce groundbreaking science thanks to its revolutionary data. As the first few images and bits of data start trickling in, you will get a preview of some of the awesome discoveries we are anticipating, and what Webb means for the future of space astronomy.
Dr. Ouellette is currently the Deputy Director of the Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx) and the Observatoire du Mont-Mégantic (OMM) at the University of Montréal. She is also the Outreach Scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope in Canada collaborating with the Canadian Space Agency. She is a frequent contributor and analyst in Canadian media on everything related to space. She also organizes and participates in science outreach events from local to international scales to encourage the interest and participation of youth and the general public in space science and to increase scientific literacy in Canada.
March 21, 2023
Canadians on the Nile
Presented by Laura Ranieri Roy, Egyptologist, Writer, and Founder of Ancient Egypt Alive
Laura did her MA thesis on Charles Currelly’s archaeology and collecting in Egypt as the foundation of the ROM today.
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Lecture Series Registration
Tuesdays
10 AM to 12 PM
February 14 to March 21, 2023
Lectures to be Virtual
Via Zoom Webinars