Hart House has a long history of facilitating future-thinking conversations on consequential topics. Many such conversations became historic occasions in their own right. If you wish you could have been there, the Hart House Centennial Dialogue Series is for you.
Comprising four special events, the Centennial Dialogue Series was designed to highlight topics that remain essential to this day—topics like Indigenous sovereignty, feminism, and global action. The best part? Rather than merely reproducing past debates, each and every event addresses current affairs and developments by featuring contemporary participants, a revamped format, and new questions.
The evening’s events represented the beginning of understanding what it means for Canada’s First Peoples [to be] in the quest for self-determination, self-government and ending the Indian Act.
James Bird on The Promise and Potential of Indigenous Sovereignty in Canada event.
Consider our next debate, Weaving Wisdom: Imagining the Future of Feminism. Taking place on September 10, 2019, it was inspired by a debate that took place at Hart House in 1929, when Agnes Macphail, then the only woman Member of the Parliament, became the first woman admitted to debate at Hart House. Here, she debated the resolution, “This house views that the emancipation of women has been a failure.” Although great strides have since been made in the cause for women’s rights, an urgent demand for equality in response to the current issues has pushed dialogue around feminism into sharper focus. For in the aftermath of the #MeToo movement, attacks on access to reproductive justice, decried funding for civil society groups, and other hot-button issues, the need for a conversation on feminism and its future is as pressing today as it was 90 years ago. What better way to have that conversation than with an intersectional and intergenerational circle of leading feminist thinkers and doers who will consider where the feminist movement in Canada has been, where it is today, and where it can take us tomorrow?
PODCAST Weaving Wisdom: Imagining the Future of Feminism
The growing demand for equality in response to the urgent issues we face has pushed dialogue around gender issues and feminism.
PODCAST: Opportunity Lost? A Call to Global Action in the Age of Trump
A conversation with celebrated human rights advocate Stephen Lewis. Part of the Hart House Centennial Dialogue Series last November.
