Toronto Oasis, Secular Community

There will be some road closures due to the Scotiabank Marathon. Please check out the link below for a listing the road closures to see if it will affect your route to our venue.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/10/19/major-downtown-road-closures-ttc-diverting-for-scotiabank-marathon-this-weekend-in-toronto.html

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.

Our featured speaker Catherine Francis will lead us in a discussion about the dispute between Trinity Western University and the law societies of Ontario and British Columbia.  The dispute was over the proposed establishment of a Christian law school with a mandatory covenant prohibiting sexual intimacy except between married heterosexual couples.  In a 7-2 split decision released on June 15, 2018, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in favour of the provincial law societies.   

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: https://www.mindengross.com/our-people/details/catherine-francis

Our featured 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. 

Check out their website https://www.citizenjanemusic.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).  Come early for coffee and conversation at 10:30 am.

Learn the what, how and why of mindfulness, a skill that changes the lives of those who practice it. Over the last 40 years, this adaptation of the ancient Eastern practice of meditation has been spreading across the world, increasingly taught in “third wave” therapies like Dialectical Behaviour Therapy. Modern neuroscience has proven its effectiveness in coping with life’s challenges, particularly those related to problems with anxiety and depression, anger and emotional dysregulation, suicidal ideation and addictions, and other serious mental health problems. By learning how to control our animal brain, we can improve our relationships, make better choices, increase positive emotions, and achieve our goals.

Speaking on this topic, our featured speaker will be Danny Firestone.   Danny is a Registered Psychotherapist with over 30 years of clinical experience working with people struggling with psychological problems, including anxiety, depression, addictions, eating disorders, PTSD and complex trauma, suicidal behaviors, and more serious mental illnesses like bipolar disorder, antisocial and borderline personality disorders, and psychosis. Over the past 15 years, he has had intensive training in Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), a modification of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy developed by Marsha Linehan out of the University of Chicago, designed and adapted specifically to treat Borderline Personality Disorder. He has taken a lead role in consulting with and developing a DBT residential treatment program, and has developed and delivered training and workshops in DBT for other service providers. In 2017, after a 35-year career in the public mental health system, Danny quit his job to start a private practice, providing DBT skills training, workshops, and individual or family therapy, while spreading the wisdom of DBT.  His website is PEACEpsychotherapy.ca.

Our musical performer will be singer songwriter Dana Sipos.  www.danasipos.com

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.

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.

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.