Our gathering this coming Sunday will as usual be at 10:30am, in the 2nd floor room of Koffler House, 569 Spadina Ave.
The Gospel narrative of Christianity is very enticing. Christianity and indeed all Abrahamic religions have stories that embrace the believer. In contrast, the scientific, rationalist narrative, despite having the matrix for an incredibly interesting story, lacks an embracing narrative. The consequences and implications of this reality, and possible remedies will be discussed by our feature speaker, Don Cullen.
Don Cullen is an historic figure in Toronto’s arts community having founded the Bohemian Embassy in Yorkville in the 1960s. The Bohemian Embassy was a coffee house and cultural hub for Toronto’s arts community. It premiered 30 productions in 6 years, showcasing folk music artists including Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, Ian & Sylvia, and the trio Sharon, Lois & Bram. The entertainment at the Bohemian Embassy also included a once a week reading series with appearances from Margaret Atwood, Al Purdy, and Gwendolyn MacEwen.
Don Cullen was the head/contributing writer for over 200 TV shows, many of them comedy variety sketches and performed as an actor in over 800 TV shows. He worked for the Wayne and Shuster comedy show and also performed in the New York Broadway comedy stage revue Beyond the Fringe. Don also has had a long career with CBC radio, having performed 1500 times and written a 1000 radio shows. In the 1970’s and 80’s, Don was the Artistic Co-director of the Leacock Festival of Humour in Orillia, ON. We are so enthused to have Don Cullen be our featured speaker!
Our musical performers will be Emilyn Stam and John Williams. Emilyn Stam 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). Emilyn performed in both seasons of the TV show Galala (UNIS TV), as a member of the house band (synths, organ, piano, accordion, violin), co-arranger and co-composer. For more on our musical performer, please check out her website emilynstam.com.