The Notwithstanding clause is perhaps the most obscure part of Canada’s constitutional history that everyone loves to hate. Ever since 1982 critics have attacked Section 33 as an unfortunate compromise that negates the Charter’s great promise of human rights. When the Quebec government invoked Section 33 to allow them to pass otherwise unconstitutional language laws, many in the rest of Canada were irate. Ever since, each time a government invokes or threatens to invoke the Notwithstanding Clause, the same criticisms re-emerge. In this talk historian Christopher Dummitt explains the origins of the clause, including how pivotal it was to ensuring repatriation, and places it within the long and vital history of responsible and parliamentary government in Canada.

National best-selling author and professional adventurer Adam Shoalts takes us on the journey of a lifetime: a nearly 4,000 km solo odyssey by canoe across Canada’s Arctic. This harrowing expedition took almost four months to complete and years of preparation. Shoalts will share photos from his journey, which involved weaving through ice floes, facing down snarling bears and galloping musk-ox, and paddling under the midnight sun in a land as old as time. But also why we urgently need to save vast wild places while it’s still possible.

In this lecture James Lockyer will be talking about his work, the causes of wrongful convictions and how to reduce their numbers in the future.

The peoples under Nazi occupation longed for the arrival of the Allied armies, but liberation could prove to be an ordeal in itself. Few places knew the mixed blessings of liberation better than the Dutch city of Nijmegen. Accidentally yet heavily bombed by the Americans in February 1944, and the scene of vicious fighting during Operation Market Garden the following September, Nijmegen found itself on the frontline for seven long months. Although free of the Germans, the city was occupied by another foreign army, the soldiers of First Canadian Army who held the Nijmegen Salient during the winter of 1944-45. Emerging from a long occupation, the citizens of Nijmegen endured privation, cold, and constant shelling while contemplating the uncertainties ahead. Emerging from the battles of the Scheldt, the Canadians rested and refitted for the final assault into Germany. With reference to official documents, the paintings of Alex Colville, and especially the diaries and accounts of Nijmegen’s inhabitants, this lecture will discuss the comparative experience of Canadian soldiers and Dutch civilians in a static and trying phase of the war rich in human interest.

Entrenched in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, freedom of religion is a fundamental freedom that has deep historical roots in our Anglo-American constitutional tradition. Yet, to view such a freedom as a legalistic or ideological relic is to divorce it from the human beings who exercise it. Where does our understanding of religious freedom come from? Is it purely a freedom to be exercised privately, or is its proper forum the public square? Is it a freedom merely for the dwindling minority of Canadians who are actively religious? The Rev. Dr. Andrew Bennett, Director of the Religious Freedom programme at Cardus and Canada’s first Ambassador for Religious Freedom will explore these questions and the nature of what is an increasingly contested freedom.

The launch and commissioning of the James Webb Space Telescope is the latest step in humanity’s centuries-long journey to understand the nature and origins of our universe and explore possibilities for life beyond Earth. From ancient philosophers to the latest headlines, science journalist Ivan Semeniuk will take you on a journey through space and time that puts new discoveries in context and shows how the work of scientists today relate to fundamental questions that have motivated skywatchers since the dawn of history.

Toronto’s ravine landscapes are not just a sanctuary for wildlife, they also protect the city against flooding and allow us to enjoy nature at our doorsteps. In this lecture Ellen Schwartzel will describe how the ravines are changing over time, how they are responding to numerous pressures and how you can explore and help protect them.

The death toll of the First World War would have been even greater had it not been for the efforts of the armies’ medical corps to fight for the lives of the wounded. In this lecture, historian Tim Cook describes how the doctors and nurses of the Canadian Army Medical Corps responded to the challenge before them to counter the lethal effects of disease, infection, and of modern weapons designed to defeat their skills. The methods and innovations they adopted were not restricted to the battlefield. Out of their experience grew new approaches to public health and to the treatment of physical and mental trauma which revolutionized the practice of twentieth-century medicine. But the story has a less seemly side, revealed in the records Cook has brought to light concerning the use of body parts for medical examination and for less scientific purposes during and after the war. Join us for a discussion of a lesser known legacy of the First World War and its influence on the history of public medicine and health policy in Canada up to the present day.

“I have a feeling that the information highway has reached a dead end,” says Michael Enright. “We are so flooded with so-called information that we are drowning in it. The result is a dislocation, a sensation that when everything is deemed important in some way, nothing is important. A lot of this is attributable to the internet and the rise of social media. Social media have two fronts; one is the trek of inconsequential people doing inconsequential things. The other is the wide dissemination of hate and the threat of violence, not to mention actual harm done to women, young people, and indeed to the political process itself. To paraphrase T. S. Eliot, ‘with all this information, where is the wisdom?’”

Our history lessons about the Great War focus on life in trenches, poison gas, battles and the bravery of our troops overseas. But what was life like for those at home in Canada? Based on stories told to her by her great aunt and research conducted in the local archives, Lynne Golding will speak to us about recruitment efforts; the shortages of food and farm labour; the conversion of factories and business for the production of war materials; the development of flight schools; the treatment in Canada of those of Austrian heritage; the endless fundraising and knitting efforts; the creation of military convalescent hospitals; and the onset of Spanish flu.

Lemurs are primates found only in Madagascar, a beautiful and exotic place, the fourth largest island in the world. However it is threatened by habitat loss and environmental degradation. Professor Wright will discuss the varieties of lemurs including the Golden Bamboo Lemur she discovered that was new to western science, her work to create a protected area that became Ranomafana National Park and a World Heritage Site, and the challenges facing Madagascar and Lemur conservation efforts. She will feature her recent work to preserve the "Lost rainforest of Crystal Mountain" and update us on the translocation of twelve threatened greater bamboo lemurs from a degraded forest fragment into the protection of the Ranomafana National Park.”

In 1924 an exhibition in London of Canadian landscapes moved the renowned English critic C. Lewis Hind to celebrate them as “the most vital group of paintings produced since the war – indeed, this century”. These landscapes of Canada’s northern lakes and rugged backwoods, painted in a boldly Post-Impressionist style, had been produced over the previous decade by the collective of Toronto-based painters known as the ‘Group of Seven’, whose aim was to forge a national school of landscape painting. In this lecture Ross King will look at both the myths and the realities of how these painters – including their talismanic colleague Tom Thomson, who died in 1917 – stormed the conservative bastions of Canadian art to establish themselves on the international stage as practitioners of a distinctive avant-garde.