Past Events

General Meeting | March 22

Photo credits: Tereska, courtesy of David Seymour-Chim Estate/Magnum Photos 

Dawid Szymin was born in Warsaw to respected publisher Benjamin Szymin, whose home was a center for the Yiddish and Jewish culture of that time. He went to Paris in 1932 to study at the Sorbonne, but took up photography to report on the lively intellectual communities and the political activism of the Front Populaire. Then he became world famous for his coverage of the Spanish Civil War. He served in the US Army during World War II, taking the name David Seymour (see website), and then picked up his camera to photograph the post-war rebuilding efforts and the plight of the orphans of war for UNESCO.

He founded the celebrated Magnum Photos collaborative in 1947, with his close friends Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and George Rodger. Chim's capacity to connect with his subjects gave him the opportunity to photograph Hollywood stars like Ingrid Bergman, Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, and Kirk Douglas. Chim's work appeared regularly in LIFE Magazine, but his life was tragically cut short when he was killed while covering the 1956 Suez Crisis for Newsweek Magazine. 

This talk will show his work and his impact, which continues to grow, most recently by the deeply researched and poetically written biography by Carole Naggar, Searching for the Light and the accompanying video. 

SCHEDULE:

2:00pm Business meeting
2:15pm Talk by Ben Shneiderman
3:00pm Q&A

Event Recording

Co-housing Women's Group March 16, 2023

Baba Yaga House and other models for living for women retirees

Guest speaker: Ronaye Matthew, Cohousing Development Consulting

A board member of the Canadian Cohousing Network since 1996, Ronaye Matthew is the leading expert on what it takes to get cohousing built in Canada. As the primary consultant in Cohousing Development Consulting, Ronaye has supported the successful development of 11 Canadian cohousing communities. www.cohousingconsulting.ca

More Information on the Co-housing Women's Group

The recent crises in long term care as a result of the Pandemic have emphasized the need for coming up with new models for aging demographics. It remains a well-documented fact that women generally have fewer access to resources than men when it comes to this stage of their lives. The group is intended to comprise those who wish to delve further into the possibilities for self-governing models of group living that combine independent spaces with communal ones (co-housing, coop housing etc.). The Baba Yaga model set up in France has inspired people across the world: https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20130305-babayagas-house

We will share experts and expertise (including inspiring writers, artists and film directors) that exist in the field to see what is possible. It is anticipated that pooling our knowledge will provide a range of realistic models for the future and may even have direct practical outcomes. While the call to participate is initially directed at women only we will decide at the first meeting whether to stay with this model.

Join the Co-housing Women's Group mailing list: Please email sneja.gunew@ubc.ca and express your interest.

Meeting Format: Zoom. Group members will receive the Zoom links in advance of all meetings.

Wall Catalyst Program | March 16

The Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies and the UBC Emeritus College have assembled a cohort of Emeriti to participate in the 2022-23 PWIAS Catalyst Program.

The Wall Catalyst Emeriti cohort will meet monthly to share research experience and engage with guest lecturers on the topic of the "Climate and Nature Emergency".

For more information on this program and the list of participating Emeriti click here.

Members of the Emeritus College are invited to attend speaker lectures throughout the year. 

Indigenous Worldviews, Indigenous Law Revitalization & Self-Determination as Critical Responses to Climate and Nature Emergency

Panel Discussion with Dr. Robert Clifford, Allard Law School and Dr. Jocelyn Stacey, Allard Law School
Moderated by Dr. Jo-ann Archibald Q’um Q’um Xiiem, Emeritus College Cohort

Robert Clifford will highlight how the project of Indigenous law revitalization and the reality of climate crisis necessarily interact, so that Indigenous theories and methodologies for Indigenous law revitalization and diagnoses and approaches to climate crisis mitigation are intricately intertwined and mutually reflective. Guiding this project are W̱SÁNEĆ understandings of place and relationship with the more-than-human world, which is a valuable source of wisdom and practice in re-imagining relationships and place within the world, and alternatives to the ‘Anthropocene’.

Jocelyn Stacey will discuss the critical connection between the climate emergency-disaster response-and Indigenous self-determination through sharing the story of her research with the Tsilhqot’in National Government, which emerged from the 2017 wildfires that at the time broke wildfire records in BC. That wildfire response highlighted how provincial and federal responses to emergencies fail to recognize and support the exercise of Indigenous jurisdiction. This story emphasizes how and why Indigenous self-determination needs to lead responses to the climate and nature emergency.

laws and seeks to relate the ways in which those laws reflect and generate out of the values, philosophies, lands, and worldviews of his people. His work is community focused and draws upon W̱SÁNEĆ law in relation to pressing problems throughout W̱SÁNEĆ territory.

She researches environmental crises and the visible and invisible ways in which law creates, regulates and prevents these events. Her work focuses on environmental assessment law, disaster law, climate change, emergency powers and the rule of law. Her current research project, The Law of Disaster Exceptionalism, investigates how law regulates disasters as disconnected and exceptional events, contrary to the experiences of those made most vulnerable to disaster and in spite of our current era of climate disruption.

Prof. Stacey works closely with BC First Nations, advancing the implementation of First Nations’ inherent jurisdiction through and beyond disaster. With the Tŝilhqot’in National Government, she has co-authored two reports on Tŝilhqot’in jurisdiction in the 2017 wildfires and the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

FORMAT: IN-PERSON AND ON ZOOM

Members of the UBC Emeritus College and the general public are invited to attend a lecture by the guest speaker. There will be a question period following the presentation.

Co-sponsors 

Emeritus College and Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies