Toronto Oasis will run our fourth online meeting this upcoming Sunday April 12th. Please review our online meeting instructions at: https://torontooasis.org/online-meeting-instructions
Our program will run from 11 am to 12:30 pm but you can join in to the meeting starting at 10:45 am. Volunteers please join by 10:30 am.
Typically, on long weekend Sundays we have a potluck lunch instead of having a featured speaker. Now that we are meeting online (and we can’t have a potluck lunch), we’ll have an open discussion format, maybe mingle in rotating breakout rooms, do Community Moments etc.
Our program will run from 11 am to 12:30 pm but you can join in to the meeting starting at 10:45 am. Volunteers please join by 10:30am.
Helen Lenskyj
Our featured speaker will be Helen Jefferson Lenskyj. Helen will give a talk about her recently released book The Olympic Games: A Critical Approach, with the following blurb on its cover:
Do the Olympic games really live up to their glowing reputation? As the biggest global sport mega-event, The Olympic Games command public and media attention, while Olympic mythology and ritual obscure their underlying function as a profit-making business enterprise. In contrast to terms such as ‘Olympic movement’, and ‘Olympic Family’, the concept ‘Olympic Industry’ focuses on sport as an economic and political enterprise, its beneficiaries including sponsors, media and politicians. Negative impacts on host cities and countries disproportionately threaten the lives and welfare of disadvantaged populations.
Citizens’ resistance campaigns have been addressing these issues for decades, with some success. Recent activism focuses on anti-doping initiatives and sexual abuse of young women. Female athletes with ‘differences of sexual development’ are targets of the discriminatory gender policies of the International Association of Athletics Federation that disqualify them from women’s events.
Helen Jefferson Lenskyj is Professor Emerita, University of Toronto, where she taught sociology. Her work as a researcher and activist on gender and sport issues began in the 1980s, and her critique of the Olympic industry include: Inside the Olympic Industry; Olympic Industry Resistance; and Gender, Athletes Rights, and the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Helen grew up in Australia and has lived in Toronto since 1966. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Toronto in 1983, and was a professor from 1986 until retiring in 2007. As well as writing books, she enjoys swimming and kayaking. Her website is: www.helenlenskyj.ca
Our program will run from 11 am to 12:30 pm but you can join in to the meeting starting at 10:45 am.
For this second online meeting, we will be having a featured speaker! Our featured speaker will be David Chernushenko, a writer, educator, speaker, film producer and explorer of ‘living lightly’ in our personal and professional lives.
He was twice elected to Ottawa city council (2010-18), where he chaired the Environment and Climate Protection Committee and played a major role in promoting a renewable energy transition, active transportation, complete streets, public health and supportive housing.
He
served as a member of Canada’s National Round table on the
Environment and the Economy, the International Olympic Committee’s
Sport and Environment Commission and as deputy leader of the Green
Party of Canada.
He
has written three books on sustainable management practices, and
produced three films: Be the Change; Powerful: Energy for Everyone;
and Bike City, Great City. He recently published his first novel,
Burning Souls, an “eco-political thriller.”
Can
we move from fearing climate breakdown and grieving
ecological destruction to fostering love and determined action? In
a time where evidence and personal experience point to our Earth’s
natural systems continuing to degrade rapidly, many of us search for
our place in this big mess. What is my role? Does it still matter?
We’ll explore together how we might face the truth straight on, and
chart a path as full of love, compassion and beauty as we can manage.
As individuals and as a community.
Toronto
Oasis will be piloting our first online meeting this upcoming Sunday
March 22nd.
Thank you to Clive
Hannah,
our volunteer social media manager, for setting up and organizing
this for us! Clive will be hosting this meeting and will be our MC.
Our program will run from
11 am to 12:30 pm but
you can join in to the meeting starting at 10:45
am.
For this first online meeting we will have some familiar Toronto Oasis Sunday elements. We will have “Joys & Concerns”, Helen Lenskyj will do the Community Moment and there will be some music (a very timely Tom Lehrer song). Then, instead of a featured speaker, we will run a session of the Toronto Oasis Book Club. To explain how that works, I’ll quote Michael Dorman who typically hosts our Book Club meetings: “We don’t read the same book together. Bring what you are currently reading or have read: books, magazines, comic books, blogs, journals, news articles, fiction and non-fiction and share with others”. Of course, you are welcome to join us regardless of whether there is something you want to share during the Book Club part of our meeting.
All Toronto Oasis in person meetings have been cancelled until further notice due to the COVID-19 situation. We hope to re-book our speakers and musicians once this crisis is over. In the meantime, we may be able to connect via video conferencing using a platform such as Zoom. We will keep you posted.
Our event starts at 11 am on the 2nd floor of the Koffler House (569 Spadina Avenue). Social 10:45am – 11:00am.
Tim Grant
Since
Confederation, Canadian cities and towns have been seen as creatures
of their provinces. To this day, virtually any decision made by
a municipal council can be overturned by a provincial government.
After Doug Ford upended Toronto’s municipal election in 2018,
a group of Torontonians consulted widely before developing a
two-pronged solution to this longstanding lack of local control.
In his presentation, our featured speaker, Tim
Grant,
will highlight the key features and engage those in attendance about
what services empowered cities should be providing.
Tim
Grant is a member of the Steering Committee of Charter City Toronto.
He has run 4 times as a Green Party candidate in the riding of
University-Rosedale and for seven years, he chaired the Harbord
Village Residents’ Association (i.e. the neighbourhood immediately
west of the Koffler House).
Citizen Jane
Our
guest musicians will be CITIZEN
JANE,
a Toronto-based folk-pop duo that evocatively weaves powerful
vocal harmonies with innovative string textures to create an
emotionally charged soundscape.
The
duo consists of married couple Reenie Perkovic (vocals, guitar,
mandolin) and Lea Kirstein (viola, fiddle, cello, vocals), who met
while studying classical music on the west coast of Canada. The
ladies have since made a home in Toronto’s vibrant music scene.
Reenie
grew up in the Toronto area, after her family escaped the civil war
in her birthplace, Sarajevo, Bosnia. Reenie was a semi-finalist in
the 2016 UK Songwriting Contest, and has released 3 solo albums. She
has opened for Juno-nominated Alysha
Brilla,
and Annabelle
Chvostek (Wailin’ Jennys).
Lea
is an acclaimed violist and fiddler, who grew up in Victoria, BC,
where she studied viola and music education at UVic. Classical
musician by day and fiddler by night, Lea discovered new ways of
melding the two styles into one. Her passion for these genres took
her across Canada & the U.S. with the Folk
Arts Quartet.
She has recorded with Juno-nominated artists Oliver
Schroer and Teresa
Doyle.
Our event starts at 11 am on the 2nd floor of the Koffler House (569 Spadina Avenue). Social 10:45am – 11:00am.
Genessa Radke
This
week our featured speaker will be Genessa
Radke. Genessa
has had a life long passion for jewellery. In 2013 she graduated the
Jewellery Methods program in fulfilling a life long dream to become a
goldsmith. She has a passion for wax carving and jewellery history.
Nico Paulo
Our guest musician will be Nico Paulo, a Portuguese/Canadian singer song-writer. Her debut EP ‘Wave Call’, released earlier this year in January 2020, is a compilation of songs that fit in a landscape of sounds that convey lo-fi Art Folk with a fusion of European and North American folk – it is dreamy, nostalgic and full of harmonies. Check out her music: https://nicopaulo.bandcamp.com/releases
Paul
Kaplan will do
the Community Moment. The Community Moment is a chance for one of
our own to share their journey, thoughts about life, or something
personal about themselves. It could be light and silly or it could
be emotionally heavy. Either way, you’ll learn more about a valued
person in our community. Interested in presenting your own Community
Moment? Contact Tania at 416oasis@gmail.com.
Our event starts at 11 am on the 2nd floor of the Koffler House (569 Spadina Avenue). Social 10:45am – 11:00am.
This
week our featured speaker, Clive
Hannah, will
give a talk about how one IT Consultant went from feeling isolated
and alone in our big city of Toronto, to feeling like everywhere he
goes is like a cuddle party.
Clive Hannah
Clive
is a Toronto Oasis volunteer, helping us manage our social media. He
has a passion for community building. In addition to his volunteer
work with Oasis, Clive is also an organizer for Toronto Adults with
ADHD Support Group and volunteers his time with a men’s group
called MasterHeart. Professionally, Clive is an independent software
consultant in IT Enterprise Architecture. All of Clive’s work,
professional and volunteer, is driven by wanting to create his life
rather than letting life happen to him.
Clive’s
talk is an example of one of our own sharing their learning and
growth with our community. If you have a topic you have learned
about and could give a talk on, contact Tania at 416oasis@gmail.com.
Emilyn Stam and John Williams
Our featured musicians will be Emilyn Stam and John Williams. Emilyn and John merge the melodic voices of violin and clarinet, creating a modern sound steeped in tradition. Not limited to original music, their repertoire often has a strong connection to traditional dance, and explores a wide palette of sound through various combinations of violin, clarinet, accordion, harmonica and piano. They first started playing music together as members of the Lemon Bucket Orkestra. Currently John also leads the 6-piece old-time jazz band The Boxcar Boys and Emilyn tours with Italian diatonic accordion virtuoso Filippo Gambetta. Their website is https://emilynandjohn.com/
Our event starts at 11 am on the 2nd floor of the Koffler House (569 Spadina Avenue). Social 10:45am – 11:00am.
“Multiform
Grammar” (MFG) is a grammatical system for the combination of words
and images. It illuminates and conceptualizes the ways in which users
of both words and images integrate them into cohesive and coherent
verbal-visual representations. This grammatical system is timely as
it enables us to better understand and apply a mode of communication
that is ubiquitous in the digital era. In this talk our featured
speaker, Noa Yaari,
will show how she is using the MFG in her current art project in the
Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies (CRRS) at the
university of Toronto focusing on how art can illuminate sensorial
and cognitive processes with broad implications.
Noa Yaari
Noa Yaari, PhD, is a Fellow at the
CRRS, artist, curator, and the developer of “Multiform Grammar.”
In her scholarship and artwork, she explores verbal-visual or
“multiform” rhetoric, especially in the creation and
communication of knowledge. She is currently creating an art
installation titled “Image-Text Relationships at the CRRS Library,”
and preparing a monograph about the MFG for publication. She has
earned a PhD in History and an MA in Humanities from York University,
an MA in the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas from the
Cohn Institute at Tel Aviv University (magna cum laude), and a
B.Ed. from Hamidrasha, Beit Berl College, School of Art, Israel. You
are welcome to see and follow her work in her monthly blog “The
Multiform Grammar Lab.”
Cassie Norton
Our
guest musician will be Cassie
Norton, a
Toronto-based violinist/singer-songwriter and the music director of
Toronto Oasis. Cassie’s music is, at times friendly, familiar, and
simple, examining ordinary characters with an extraordinary level of
depth. Other times it is more adventurous, rumbling with dissonant
and irreverent sounds and epic themes.
Cassie
and her band have been performing at Toronto venues such as Burdock
Hall, Arrayspace, and The Supermarket since January 2018, and
released their first EP: Lullaby for the End of Time in February
2019. In addition, Cassie has recorded two full length albums as a
solo artist, Little Strength (2009) and Quiet Wilderness (2010).
When
she isn’t busy making her own music, Cassie shares her love of
music with others through teaching. She teaches a variety of private
and ensemble classes at Regent
Park School of Music, and through her private studio. Check
out her website: https://www.cassienorton.com/
Our event starts at 11 am on the 2nd floor of the Koffler House (569 Spadina Avenue). Social 10:45am – 11:00am.
This Family Day long-weekend Sunday, join us for a potluck lunch! Come share your food, stories, experiences and insights!
When you RSVP on Meetup, please indicate, in the comments section, what you intend to bring: main dish, salad, dessert, or drinks. Thank you!
Every week we gather to be inspired, entertained, motivated and build our secular community in Downtown Toronto. Our core values are: People are more important than beliefs. Reality is known through reason. Meaning comes from making a difference. Human hands solve human problems. Be accepting and be accepted. Check out our website: www.torontooasis.org.
