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.

Everything about us is an emergent property of our enormous, intricate, and orderly nervous system. And our nervous system, like any other system, requires security. Providing that security is the job of our immune system. But treason at the biological level is real. At every level of the nervous system there are internal miscreants, rabble-rousers, and spies. In this lecture, neurologist Dr. Roy Baskind will take us on a tour of those autoimmune domestic threats – from our nerves, up our spinal column, and into our brain – and in the process expose our internal ‘fifth column’: autoimmunity against our own nervous system. This lecture aims to leave us with a newfound awe of our personal neurological government and how it can all go so wrong.

The Jewish population of Canada is currently about 400,000 people of which close to half reside in the GTA.  They first settled in the area in the 1820s and their number continued to increase when Jewish immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe arrived in Canada in large numbers after 1880.  They came seeking a home and country in which they could not only survive and prosper, but one in which they could leave a positive legacy for their children, grandchildren, and the generations that followed.  They did indeed find the refuge they were searching for in Toronto and elsewhere, yet their acceptance and integration into the larger society was not always wanted or welcome, and the struggles they faced caused much inner turmoil and hardship.  In this lecture historian and author Allan Levine examines the key lessons, trends and patterns of two centuries of Jewish life in Toronto.

Honey bees play a vital role in agriculture through the pollination of food crops. One third of the food we eat is pollinated by bees. Honey bees provide 80% of this service – native bees provide the rest. Did you know there are 423 species of native bees living in Ontario? They are also vitally important as they pollinate many native plants. Hummingbirds and some bat species pollinate too! Honey bees face numerous health challenges and the role of the University of Guelph’s Honey Bee Research Centre (HBRC) is to help beekeepers keep their bees healthy. The centre conducts hive health studies and trains beekeepers on a global scale. In this presentation Paul Kelly will outline the challenges bees face, survey the research and education activities of the HBRC, and let us know how we can help them help bees.

Ron Brown’s latest book, Top 170 Unusual Things to See in Ontario, was newly released and expanded in 2022. Using the book as a starting point, this illustrated lecture will explore some of Ontario’s most unusual features and landscapes including such phenomena as The Screaming Heads, Guelph’s “Notre Dame”, Toronto’s Graffiti Alleys, and its “Luminous Veil” on the Bloor Street Viaduct as well as the light show in Brockville’s railway tunnel.