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• FREE Winter 2025 Speaker Event Series (via Zoom)

  • Start
    January 13, 2025
  •  
    10:00 AM
  • End
    February 03, 2025
  •  
    12:00 PM
  • Location
    Zoom virtual meetings

  
  

  Winter 2025 Speaker Event Series 
  
  

  All Winter 2025 speaker events will be conducted virtually using Zoom software

  January 13  Eric Kennedy, PhD Living with Wildfire in a Flammable Future   January 20  Tim Richter Homelessness in Canada Today  January 27  Beverley Cooper Two Stories of Injustice: Looking at History Through the Lens of a Playwright  February 3 Barbara Perry, PhD The Continuum of Hate

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

    

  
   
  

  
  

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• Living with Wildfire in a Flammable Future

  • When
    January 13, 2025
  •  
    10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    Zoom virtual lecture

  
  

     

  Eric Kennedy, PhD
  

  Dr. Eric Kennedy is an Associate Professor of Disaster and Emergency Management at York University. Kennedy serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Journal of Emergency Management, as well as Associate Director of York University’s Emergency Mitigation, Engagement, Governance, Response Institute (Y-EMERGE).

  Kennedy’s work focuses on wildfire management and the human and social dimensions of fire. In particular, his lab works on decision-making and use-of-evidence for wildfire preparedness, response, and recovery. Kennedy conducts extensive work in the context of wildfire management, exploring how communities and governments can better prepare for a changing climate and increasing fire load.

  He has also led a national COVID-19 monitoring project, tracking the public attitudes, risk perceptions, and knowledge related to the pandemic. In all his work, he focuses on producing research that addresses real-world needs, supports government decision-making, and helps create a safer and more equitable world.

  
  

  Living with Wildfire in a Flammable Future

  In this presentation, Dr. Eric Kennedy will share information about the past, present, and future of wildfire in Canada. Canada is a country shaped by - and dependent on - fire, but climate change and other stressors are leading to more dangerous and destructive fires than before. In this presentation, we’ll focus on some of the challenges in “learning to live with fire,” and some of the tensions and paradoxes of trying to figure out how to navigate our flammable future.

  
  

  
  

   

  
  

  
  

  
  

  This event is part of the Winter 2025 Speaker series. 
  

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• Homelessness in Canada Today

  • When
    January 20, 2025
  •  
    10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    Zoom virtual lecture

     

  
  

  Tim Richter
  

  Tim Richter is the Founder, President & CEO of the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness (CAEH). The CAEH leads a national movement of individuals, organizations and communities working together to end homelessness in Canada. 

  Under his leadership, the CAEH has shaped federal, provincial and local homelessness action and policy including the national implementation of Housing First, the National Housing Strategy and Reaching Home: Canada’s Homelessness Strategy. Most recently Tim was a co-author of “The National Housing Accord: A Multi-Sector Approach to Ending Canada’s Rental Housing Crisis.”

  Since it’s founding in 2012, the CAEH has hosted ten highly successful National Conferences on Ending Homelessness; launched a national Training and Technical Assistance program and, launched Built for Zero Canada – a national change effort helping a core group of leading communities end chronic and veteran homelessness – a first step on the path to eliminating all homelessness in Canada. Through this program the CAEH has helped six communities end homelessness for a population and eight achieve reductions in chronic homelessness.

  Prior to joining the CAEH, Tim was President & CEO of the Calgary Homeless Foundation charged with leading the implementation of Calgary’s 10 Year Plan to End Homelessness – the first plan of its kind in Canada. In the first four years of Calgary’s 10 Year Plan more than 4,000 homeless men, women and children were housed, 3,582 units of affordable housing were funded, and homelessness went down for the first time in 20 years of counting. 

  Tim is currently co-chair of the National Housing Council, an independent advisory body mandated by the National Housing Strategy Act to provide advice to the federal Minister of Housing on improving the National Housing Strategy, improving housing outcomes for all Canadians, and advancing the progressive realization of the right to housing.

  
  

  Homelessness in Canada Today
  

  Why we are seeing so much homelessness in Canada today and what we can do about it? The scale of homelessness in Canada today is as big as, or bigger than, Canada’s largest natural disasters in terms of the number of people unhoused, the loss of life and the cost to the economy. The CAEH estimates 265,000 to 300,000 people per year will experience homelessness in Canada this year. In a recent national poll, the CAEH found that a staggering 12% of Canadians have experienced homelessness in their lives. In our country of 41 million people, that’s 4.9 million people – which is slightly more than the population of Alberta.

  As the scale of homelessness mirrors the scale of natural disasters in Canada, there are many lessons to be learned from disaster response in how we can tackle homelessness. But to start, we have to understand homelessness as a housing problem, not one caused by addiction, mental illness or any individual fault or failing. My presentation will explore why we are seeing homelessness like we are today and how we can solve it. 

  
  

  
  

   

  
  

  
  

  
  

  This event is part of the Winter 2025 Speaker series. 
  

  Show details
• Two Stories of Injustice: Looking at History Through the Lens of a Playwright

  • When
    January 27, 2025
  •  
    10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    Zoom virtual lecture

     

  

  Beverley Cooper
  

  Beverley Cooper is an award-winning playwright, dramaturge and teacher. Her plays have been produced widely across Canada and include Thin Ice (co-written with Banuta Rubess, Chalmers/Dora Award), Clue in the Fast Lane (co-written with Ann-Marie MacDonald), The Eyes of Heaven, The Lonely Diner, Janet Wilson Meets the Queen (nominated for a Prix Rideau Award) and If Truth Be Told.

  Innocence Lost: A Play about Steven Truscott was finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. In the summer of 2024, she had two new plays produced: The Trials of Maggie Pollock (Blyth Festival) and Jim Watts: Girl Reporter (4^th Line Theatre).

  Until 2022, Beverley was the coordinator of The CASA Project, a charitable arm of the Playwrights Guild of Canada supporting women playwrights in South Africa and a recipient of the Bra D’or Award, an award that recognizes an individual for their efforts in supporting women playwrights. She holds an MFA from the University of Guelph and has presented her work at Women Playwrights International conferences in Mumbai, Stockholm, Cape Town and Santiago. She also directs audiobooks for Penguin Random House including titles by Margaret Atwood, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Miriam Toews and Tanya Tagaq. Beverley’s plays are published by Scirocco Drama.  beverleycooper.com

  
  

  Two Stories of Injustice: Looking at History Through the Lens of a Playwright. 

  The trials of Steven Truscott and Maggie Pollock.

  
  

  Playwright Beverley Cooper shares two incredible stories of injustice and resilience and how they both became hit plays for The Blyth Theatre Festival. In 2008, Beverley wrote Innocence Lost, a play about the wrongful conviction of fourteen-year-old Steven Truscott, sentenced to hang in 1959 for a crime he did not commit. This past summer, Blyth produced Beverley’s newest play The Trials of Maggie Pollock. Maggie Pollock was the last person to be charged and convicted of witchcraft in Canada. The year was 1919. Beverley will talk about the facts of these two unusual cases and how research inspires her work as a playwright. She will also talk about the hard creative decisions a writer must face when writing a play so it is illuminating yet also entertaining.

  Beverley would love to answer questions about Steven Truscott and Maggie Pollock as well as any queries you may have about playwriting or the current state of Canadian theatre. 

  
  

  
  

   

  
  

  
  

  
  

  This event is part of the Winter 2025 Speaker series. 
  

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• A Continuum of Hate

  • When
    February 03, 2025
  •  
    10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
  • Location
    Zoom virtual lecture

  
  

     

  Barbara Perry, PhD
  

  Barbara Perry is a Professor in the Faculty of Social Science and Humanities at Ontario Tech University, and the Director of the Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism. She also holds a UNESCO Chair in Hate Studies.

  She has written extensively on social justice generally, and hate crime and right-wing extremism specifically. She has published several books spanning each of these areas, including Diversity, Crime and Justice in Canada, In the Name of Hate: Understanding Hate Crime, and Right-wing Extremism in Canada. She was the General Editor of a five volume set on hate crime (Praeger), and editor of Volume 3: Victims of Hate Crime of that set. In 2019, she published Right-wing Extremism in Canada, and in 2022 she published Right-wing Extremism in Canada and the United States. Her work has been published in journals representing diverse disciplines: Theoretical Criminology, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Journal of History and Politics, and American Indian Quarterly.

  Dr. Perry continues to work in the area of hate crime, and has made substantial contributions to the limited scholarship on hate crime in Canada, including work on anti-Muslim violence, antisemitic hate crime, hate crime against 2SLGBTQI communities, the community impacts of hate crime, and right-wing extremism in Canada. She is regularly called upon by policy makers, practitioners, and local, national and international media as an expert on hate crime and right-wing extremism.

  
  

  A Continuum of Hate
  

  We find ourselves in an era of rising and intensifying manifestations of hate. I first contextualize these trends within the recent and current domestic and geopolitical tendencies that create a climate of hate. I then turn to consideration of what I see as the three most threatening areas: online hate, hate crime, and right-wing extremism. Having no doubt instilled deep concern and anxiety, I end on a positive note by sharing thoughts on how we might individually and collect counter these disturbing patterns.

  
  

  
  

   

  
  

  
  

  
  

  This event is part of the Winter 2025 Speaker series. 
  

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