Our event starts at 11 am on the 2nd floor of the Koffler House (569 Spadina Avenue). Come early for coffee and conversation at 10:30 am.
This Sunday we will have a book reading by author Jeff Schmidt.
His book POWER WITHIN begins with his seventy-fifth birthday celebration, held as a fundraiser, a practice that began after loss of his best friend to AIDS.
We are then taken to his first birthday memory at age three in wartime Germany, where the family was soon to be uprooted from a cozy home during severe winter weather.
Emigration to Canada as a child and an adolescence marked by struggles with sexual identity and fitting-in set the stage for a tumultuous life story. Accounts of partner relationships and arrests for gay sex are interwoven with tales of work in the fields of tourism, film acting and landscaping. Travel, painting and volunteering, highlighted by visits to orphanages in India and sponsoring two children, round out the story of later years.
Spiritual searching and meditation point the way to finding the silver lining—the positive—in overcoming difficult situations. Searching for an understanding of life, accepting what is and aiding our neighbour have become of utmost importance to the author, along with active participation in the gay community. Oscar Wilde’s words might sum it all up: “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
Today, Jeff lives out his happy retirement in central Toronto. Travel, volunteering, painting, and now writing are his main interests. In 2012 he created a short video about his life for the Inside Out Film Festival also called “Power Within”.
For our musical performances we will have Willow Rutherford. Willow is a troubadour balladeer of folk, jazz, Celtic and traditional standards, with deep roots in the Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver indie music scene. She has composed soundtracks for documentaries and animated shorts. Willow sings in English, French and Spanish.
To RSVP to this event please visit our Meetup page.
Steven is a life long construction professional who entered the industry at age 15, received construction training at George Brown College and was in a hurry to apply his skills, especially in non-profit work. He has worked in the trades and in management and now works in litigation as a construction claims consultant.
Our featured musician will be Emilyn Stam. Emilyn is a Toronto-based fiddler, pianist and accordionist who creates, performs, records and teaches in folk, trad, and neo-trad styles from Europe and Canada. She has 4 Canadian Folk Music Award Nominations, (The Shoeless, Eh?!, Lemon Bucket Orkestra) and 2 Juno Award Nominations (Lemon Bucket Orkestra). For more on our musical performer, please check out her website 
Catherine holds Bachelor of Arts (1981) and Bachelor of Law (1985) degrees from the University of Toronto and was called to the Ontario Bar in 1987. Catherine is a long-time partner at Minden Gross LLP, a mid-sized downtown Toronto law firm, practicing principally in the areas of commercial and insolvency litigation. Catherine was raised in a secular household with a strong belief in equality rights and is keenly interested in legal issues affecting the interests of non-believers and the separation of Church and State. Her website is: 
Originally hailing from the industrial landscape of Hamilton, Ontario, Dana Sipos inhabited the far Canadian north – Yellowknife, Northwest Territories – for many years before going nomad. Her captivatingly nuanced songs continue to be infused with a wild wind and a haunting, slightly hypnotic surrealism akin to the mysteries of the North. Her 2015 release, Roll Up the Night Sky, was nominated for a Canadian folk music award in the Pushing the Boundaries category celebrating innovation in creating new folk sounds. She has a new album, Trick of the Light, released earlier this year, in spring 2018.
For this long-weekend Sunday, join us for a potluck lunch! Come share your food, stories, experiences and insights!
David Burman is a graduate of the Faculty of Dentistry and PhD in community health from U of T. He has spent several years working in Cree communities along the coast of James Bay. His interests include indigenous environmental issues, spirituality, and the social determinants of health. David has been active in the peace and environmental movements for over 40 years. He was a candidate for the Green Party in 4 elections, and helped start Toronto’s first local currency system (LETS). He is an active member of Ecologos and Transition Toronto and has served on the boards of directors of ICA Canada, a community development organization, the Ontario Healthy Communities Coalition and Science for Peace.
For our musical performance, we will have The Spanish Waiter, a guitar/violin duo featuring Mike Hopkins and his musical partner. Mike Hopkins, B.F.A., has studied Classical guitar for twenty years. In that time, he has performed a repertoire ranging from the Renaissance to contemporary pieces.
So begins the story our featured speaker David Bramwell will be here to share. David has had a lifetime of building and fixing, a lifetime of exploring and visiting new places. For David, it started at age 8 with water-based activities when his parents bought their cottage. Sailboats were a common feature. In his twenties and beyond he went on week-long wilderness canoe trips. The longest were in the range of 150 km.
Our featured musical performer will be Cassie Norton. We are always so enthused to have the very talented Cassie return to our stage! Cassie is the music director of Toronto Oasis and a Toronto based singer-songwriter, classically trained violinist/folk leaning tunesmith with a punk rock heart. She has recorded two full length albums, Little Strength (2009) and Quiet Wilderness (2010). She teaches a variety of private and ensemble classes at Regent Park School of Music, and at her private studio. Check out her website: 
Broadly defined, experiences that could be categorized as “mystical” have been described across millennia of human history and by virtually all religious traditions. Mystical states of consciousness, specifically a personal spiritual experience of union with an aspect of “Divine reality” has long fascinated interest and frustratingly resisted inquiry. Recently published studies on the fringes of contemporary neuroscience has shown that psychedelic drugs like psilocybin and LSD, given under supportive conditions, can reliably occasion experiences that are phenomenologically similar to those experienced spontaneously by the mystics of history. In combination with cutting edge brain imaging technologies (such as MEG and functional MRI) and along with advances in biochemistry and receptor pharmacology this research has opened mysticism to rigorous scientific investigations into the causes and consequences of mystical states, and may allow for a future understanding that naturalizes mysticism.