Toronto Oasis, Secular Community

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 science-based project changes the existential despair that many of us feel about climate change and global warming, to one of possibility. The project has enlisted 62 researchers and 140 advisers from 22 countries to model the possible solutions to global warming, restricted to the peer reviewed literature, for the amount of carbon reduced, the cost of implementation and the money saved. They have clearly shown that global warming can be reversed in 30 years and that the actions required to do so are socially desirable in their own right, such as reducing food waste, empowering girls and women and moving to a plant rich diet. The top 80 solutions were ranked and categorized by sectors. In this presentation our featured speaker, David Burman, will introduce the concept and provide some examples from the book by the same name.

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.

Since 2009 David has been a trained facilitator of the Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream symposium and Generation Waking Up though the Pachamama Alliance, and a founding member of Unify Toronto, the aims of which are to bring Indigenous, holistic world views to the industrial world.  This program is a complement to his teaching at U of T — Indigenous Issues in Health and Healing. In the past year he has been deeply involved with Project Drawdown with the objective of making Toronto a drawdown city.

Links: www.davidburman.net    www.pachamama.org    www.ecologos.ca  www.ohcc-ccso.ca  www.icacan.ca     www.drawdown.org   www.unifytoronto.ca

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.

Mike’s musical journey has been influenced by Classical as well as jazz and other popular genres in the creation of his own original compositions. This culminated in his mini-masterpiece, The Spanish Waiter in 2008.  His newest release, Hold Me Up – The Formula, came out on June 24^th, 2017. http://mikehopkins.ca

To RSVP to this event please visit our Meetup page.

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.

Every marina or boat storage facility has one. It’s the area where long-term residents are stored, paved with good intentions. It is where Eriewinds, then named Elan lll, had been for 5 sailing seasons before October 2017.

She has pedigree, designed by Sparkman & Stevens, built by the now defunct Northern Yachts of Pickering in 1975. Bought custom made for racing, she has a set of small brass plaques on a bulkhead recalling her racing accomplishments during the late 70s. She passed from father to son but sat in her cradle after the son bought a new boat about 2012. The son was looking for the right buyer. Not for price but someone who appreciated what she is and could restore some of her glory.   Someone who could honour his father’s memory.

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.

David has also had a lifetime of technology-based activities since the age of 12. As a teenager he installed telephone wire and jacks on his parent’s house (and other projects that were not sanctioned) and by 15 had his room controlled by a hand-held box about the size of a mobile phone.

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: www.cassienorton.com

To RSVP to this event please visit our Meetup page.

Our event starts at 11 am on the 2nd floor of the Koffler House (569 Spadina Avenue)

In this interactive session, we will, first, explore the nature of hierarchies: on what criteria are they based? How do we personally experience them? We will then relate this to knowledge: whose knowledge is valued? Whose knowledge is de-valued? Who has access to knowledge creation and dissemination? What effects does this have? The discussion is based on a theoretical approach called the BIAS FREE Framework. Anyone interested can find it on the internet, but there is no need to do so. We will not be dealing with the Framework as a whole, but only look at this most basic aspect of it.

We will have Margrit Eichler facilitating and leading us through this interactive session. Margrit Eichler is Professor Emerita of the Department of Social Justice Education at OISE/UT. One of her research streams is concerned with how to avoid biases in research that are often unconscious and due to existing social hierarchies. One of the outputs of this work is the BIAS FREE Framework, co-authored with Mary Anne Burke. It has been applied across the world. Since it is user-driven and asks questions rather than provide answers, it is applicable across different cultures.

Our musical performer this Sunday will be Lindsay Foote.  Lindsay is a singer songwriter who writes honest, soul-bearing music and couples that with a voice that will melt even the hardest heart.  Inspired by the alternative folk music scene, Lindsay has been writing songs for as long as she can remember. Originally from Winchester, Massachusetts, she moved to Canada in 2009 to study voice at the University of Toronto. 

Her newest release, Going Gone EP, boasts lush acoustic arrangements paired with Lindsay’s signature candid writing style. The songs explore love, loss, and facing the truth even in the toughest moments. From her Going Gone EP,  “Silence” was featured on CBC Metro Morning, CBC Big City Small World, and CJRU Double Booked. RAW RAMP Magazine calls these songs “the most celestial & moving folk songs you can imagine” and For the Rabbits calls it “the sound of an artist expanding their musical horizons and fulfilling a very rich promise.”

We are so enthused to have Lindsay Foote return to the Oasis stage!  https://www.lindsayfoote.com

To RSVP to this event please visit our Meetup page.

Our event starts at 11 am on the 2nd floor of the Koffler House (569 Spadina Avenue)

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.

This Sunday Brandon Cirella will be our featured speaker.  Brandon is an avid psychonaut, amateur (natural) philosopher and aspiring neuroscientist. He graduated with a BSc. Neuroscience and Mental Health, Carleton University. His research interests include psychoactive plants and chemicals and their effects on the brain and mind, their emerging usage as a form of psychotechnology, and the computational basis underlying neural information processing and the phenomenology of conscious experience. He is most intrigued by the mind-problem and the application of novel psychotechnologies to its solution. He is currently reading Process and Reality, a process-relational metaphysics by philosopher/mathematican Alfred North Whitehead. Most of his thinking is done to a classical soundtrack; Bach, Beethoven, Rachmaninov, and Chopin are frequently featured.

This Sunday we will to be returning to our regular format and having some live music in addition to having a speaker!  Our featured musician will be Abigail Lapell.  Check out a sampling of her music at  https://www.abigaillapell.com/.  It’s awesome!  Abigail Lapell is a Toronto folk noir songwriter who draws from roots, indie and punk rock traditions. Hailed as an artist to watch by NOW Magazine, she’s toured across North America and Europe, performing on vocals, piano, harmonica and finger style guitar. Closer to home, she’s completed tours by bicycle, canoe and train. Lapell won the 2017 Canadian Folk Music Award for Contemporary Album of the Year and the 2016 Colleen Peterson Songwriting Award from the Ontario Arts Council. Her new album, Hide Nor Hair, is out now on Coax Records.

To RSVP to this event please visit our Meetup page.

Our event starts at 11 am on the 2nd floor of the Koffler House (569 Spadina Avenue)

Ritual can be found in all living species and since time immemorial, rituals of one kind or another can be identified in human civilizations. Rituals play an important role in society. Rituals remind us of what is important and provide a sense of stability and continuity in our lives. However, our modern society doesn’t always include formalized or consistent rituals to mark events or the passage of time.

This week’s discussion will explore the idea of ritual in our lives. What is ritual? Why is it important? How do you think about or experience ritual in your life? What kind of ritual(s) do we have in our Oasis community? How as an Oasis community do we think about ritual?

You are invited to think about ritual this week. What rituals are important to you and why?

Martin Frith will be our discussion leader. Martin is a founding member of Toronto Oasis and in his personal and professional life wears many hats. As a Humanist Officiant, he has led public rituals marking, births, deaths, marriages and separations. As a therapist, he has worked with individuals, couples, families and organizations to use ritual to manage transitions.

To RSVP to this event please visit our Meetup page.

Our event starts at 11 am on the 2nd floor of the Koffler House (569 Spadina Avenue)

Based on and inspired by Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind – Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, this Sunday Tania Akon will lead us in a group discussion on morality.  We will discuss key questions and findings addressed in the book such as:

“Where Does Morality Come From?”

“The Conservative Advantage”

“Why Are We So Groupish?”

Tania Akon is a Toronto Oasis organizer.  She earned a B.A.Sc degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto and a B.Ed from OISE, also at UofT.  She is currently a high school teacher and teaches Science-Physics/Mathematics/Computer Science.

To RSVP to this event please visit our Meetup page.

Our event starts at 11 am on the 2nd floor of the Koffler House (569 Spadina Avenue)

This Sunday at Oasis, Dan Cooperstock will lead us in a review and discussion of the 5 Oasis principles, including their full-paragraph explanations, the 12 principles of Humanism (given that we are now an affiliate member of Humanist Canada), and for some more contrast, the 7 Unitarian Universalist principles, and the (over-simplified) 6 Quaker testimonies (principles for living).

Dan is the Toronto Oasis Treasurer, a non-theist Quaker, and a software entrepreneur, writing and selling software for charities and churches. 

For anyone who would like to read all of those principles before the meeting, here is a link to the presentation, which contains them:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1B-icUXlxfcN9H7Vnlo_xSL4EK4rmX5sx/view?usp=sharing

To RSVP to this event please visit our Meetup page.

Our event starts at 11 am on the 2nd floor of the Koffler House (569 Spadina Avenue)

From the earliest images of Lady Justice (ancient Egypt), to the silver screen’s adaptation of DC comic’s Justice League; we are a people that are both consumed and united by this one idea. It has been said that justice requires struggling, suffering, and sacrifice. Do we want more justice? Do we want a different kind of justice? Join us in a discussion as A. D’Agio facilitates a discussion on the topic of justice. What might justice look like in the 21st century, and what might be the cost?

Born in England, A. D’Agio resides now in Toronto, writing poetry and lyrics about humans, and their quirksome relationships with each another. Experience first hand the mind numbing madness:

https://twitter.com/HumanistPoet or https://www.facebook.com/HumanistPoetAdagio

To RSVP to this event please visit our Meetup page.

Our event starts at 11 am on the 2nd floor of the Koffler House (569 Spadina Avenue)

In animals, predators are most often selfish loners, although wolves, many apes and most marine mammals hunt cooperatively. Herbivores normally either live individually in safe environments, like trees, or are highly gregarious. Humans are somewhere in the middle and this duality emerges in many forms such as the political split seen in many countries between competitive, business-oriented, low-tax policies versus community-minded, cooperative, pro-welfare-state policies, or even simply Good and Evil which are strongly associated with, respectively, giving to the community and taking from it.

Join us this week for a group discussion on this topic. Share your experiences, knowledge and ideas! The discussion will be facilitated by Bob Fisher. Bob is a physicist and engineer originally from the UK, based in Houston and working temporarily in Toronto. He is approaching retirement and has no formal training in sociology or psychology: in fact he doesn’t understand people at all. In his spare time he is working on a book for an improved system of democracy.

To RSVP to this event please visit our Meetup page.