Catherine the Great has been remembered either as one of the most famous or as one of the most infamous of Russia’s rulers. Her path to the throne was an unusual one, made possible through marriage and a coup.  The reign that followed was marked by her Enlightened gaze, by a series of successful wars that expanded Russia’s empire in ever more Imperial ways, by the beginnings of Russia’s famed intelligentsia, by the peak of the influence of Russia’s nobility, by the nadir of the status of its serfs, and by one of the most terrifying uprisings ever to disrupt

One of the most iconic Canadian painters, Emily Carr is also admired for her autobiographical writings that in a large measure shaped our perception of her artistic career. This power point illustrated talk will contextualize this personal narrative with facts and documents discovered by successive Canadian scholars fascinated by Emily’s art and personality. Come and hear a fresh perspective on being a British Columbia woman artist in a world dominated by Group of Seven giants.

In this illustrated lecture, I will outline the major contributions of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BCE) to human thought.

Aristotle was first and foremost a biologist who got his hands dirty examining marine specimens off the coast of the island of Lesbos in the eastern Aegean Sea. He is also ranked among the five greatest logicians in human history, on the basis of his invention of a system for reasoning about relations between non-empty classes of things (a system that contemporary logicians have proved is sound and complete) as well as of his method of �contrasted

Topic – Adam Smith

Details – TBA

The Crimean War (1854-56) was formative for Florence Nightingale in many ways. The fund that was raised in her honour was used to establish the first secular nurses training school in the world, at St Thomas’ Hospital, London, which opened in 1860. From it teams of nurses and matrons were sent out, to the U.K., Europe, the U.S., Canada, Australia, etc., start professional nursing in those countries.

The reports Nightingale wrote after the war were formative for her development as a researcher (she was the first woman Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society). The Crimean War had a

Alan Turing (1912-1954) was an English mathematician who contributed enormously to very foundations of our modern computer-driven world. Although many people have heard of his involvement in breaking the German “Enigma” code during WWII, his life before and after this period is equally important. In the 1930s, he conceived of the Turing Machine, a hypothetical computational device critical to solving mathematic’s “decision problem”. After the war, he worked with some of the earliest electronic computers and after turning to the problems artificial intelligence, concocted the Turing Test, a means of verifying computer intelligence. Turing’s life story would be incomplete without

No matter what cause he espoused, what major politician or other grandees he met or wrote about, Russell always had the self-confidence and the manners of a British aristocrat. These characteristics were always coupled with his ability to relate to people of all classes and occupations. He recognized personal courage and integrity wherever it occurred, notably in the Quaker teacher Edward Grubb. His Radicalism encompassed an extraordinarily wide range, from support for women’s suffragists, such a Catherine Marshall, trade unionists, guild socialists, notably G. D. H. Cole, pacifists, conscientious objectors, especially Alfred Barratt Brown, to advocates of companionate marriage. Those

Franz Liszt spanned the Romantic era. As a child he met Beethoven; as an elderly man he was introduced to Debussy. Between times, this protean personality was intimately acquainted with many of the leading artistic figures of the age. His circle was not confined simply to musicians like Wagner, Chopin, Berlioz and Schumann, although he knew them well. Among his friends and colleagues were painters, poets, writers and sculptors, such as Delacroix, Heine, Lamartine, George Sand and Bartolini. He mixed just as easily with politicians and could count several of the crowned heads of Europe among his friends.