Humber College Retirees Association presents a four-part seminar series that will showcase four former Humber faculty who have not only contributed significantly to the educational well being of our students but are in many cases also well renowned authors. Although each presentation is individual and unique the overall theme is the influence of the past on the present as conveyed through their personal stories.
Faces of Humber: The Ever Present Past
Classroom: North Campus, B204 from 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
May 7, 2019
1. Joe Kertes “Exploring Personal History Through Fiction
Joe will discuss his own roots and explain how he tried to uncover the meaning of personal historic events through the writing of his fiction – in other words, using fictional characters to reflect upon and give coherence to historic events. Kertes himself was a young Hungarian refugee who fled the Russians during the revolution of 1956. But before his birth his family had to endure and survive the horror that was World War II and to come to terms with what it meant to be East European Jews during the dark time. These events are recounted in Gratitude and The Afterlife of Stars, Kertes’s two most recent books, both historic novels.
May 14, 2019
2. John Steckley – “The History of Indigenous Groups in Ontario: Stories Untold
John Steckley’s presentation will be on three main Indigenous groups whose story forms a large part of the history of Ontario: the Wendat (Huron)/Wyandot, the Anishinaabe (Ojibwa, Chippewa, Mississauga, Algonquin), and the Haudenosaunee ( the Six Nations of the Iroquois). This presentation will include linguistic elements such as the difference between the names that the three groups are known by in most history books, and the names they call themselves, and the origin and meaning of place names such as Ontario, Toronto, Mississauga, Niagara and Etobicoke.
May 21, 2019
3. Antanas Sileika – “Literature and History from ‘The Other Europe’”
The late Philip Roth edited a series of books from “The Other Europe” by which he meant Eastern Europe. Antanas Sileika will look at north-eastern Europe in the twentieth century through the lens of his own novels and the lenses of a few other writers of both fiction and non-fiction, including Timothy Snyder, Anne Applebaum, Czeslaw Milosz, Norman Davies, and others.
May 28, 2019
4. Les Takahashi – Japanese Canadian History: an Overview and the Takahashi/Kodama families’ experiences
Les Takahashi will trace his family’s Canadian history and show the coincidental timeline of key events in Japanese Canadian history from the late 19th Century to the present and from British Columbia to more general presence in Canada.
Registration:
Experience all four sessions for $50.
Registration can be completed through Eventbrite using the following link.
For further information contact:
- Barbara Carruthers at barbe.carruthers@gmail.com
- Christine Tomchak at ctomchak@gmail.com
