Wow! What a year!
When the news of the global pandemic and states of emergency hit in March, we were pretty despondent. Our distinctive brand of programming placed food, drink and in-person interaction at the heart of all we do. We were forced to cancel our movie and reading group pub nights in Vancouver, Surrey and Prince George, not to mention our two summer intensives at McLeese Lake in the Cariboo and Linnaea Farm on Cortes Island.
But, as you can see, we regrouped. First of all, a major benefactor from Ontario advanced us money to produce a book on the pandemic at which we are hard at work. We were also fortunate in having so many members who chose to continue participating in our reading and movie groups after we switch to delivering them online.
With so many activities canceled or reduced, we also decided to take the plunge and deliver courses online. While the subject matter and pedagogical approach we use for our summer intensives made them poor candidates for online delivery, other kinds of courses ended up being a great success. We taught courses on the popular TV series Game of Thrones and Trailer Park Boys, as well as courses on the history of the world economy and on the “Identitarian moment” in modern identity politics in May, June and July.
We also made use of our online format in expanding the geographic reach of our all of our programming and were pleased to have students enroll from Barbados and South Africa, as well as Alberta, Ontario, Prince Edward Island and Georgia.
Because of our commitment to offering minimal barriers to folks struggling in a neoliberal economy and endless bouts of austerity, we felt it was important to make our course material available free online. Our web site now has thirty-nine free classes available for download or through one’s preferred podcasting service.
Unfortunately, that has meant that Los Altos Radio, a documentary series in tribute to James Burke’s Connections and The Day the Universe Changed has been recorded but not edited. We anticipate a January or February air date for the series on CFUR 88.7 in Prince George and in the form of free, commercial-free podcasts.
Next year also promises a return to normal. Our plan is to return to regular in-person programming on September 1st, in time for our summer intensive course on landscape, co-taught by Corey Matthews, Canada’s premier landscape painter. In the interim, we will be continuing to offer programming online.
In May, we will again run four online courses you can read about here. They will include a course on the history of the environment and environmental politics in Anglo America and a course on the United States’ transition from secular republic to holy empire of the elect.
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We will also continue running a monthly film night and fortnightly reading groups, one on the rise of the new authoritarianism, examining the movements backing Jair Bolsonaro, Narendra Modi, Donald Trump and others, and another on present and past diaspora, migration and “white settler states” like Canada and Argentina.
We will also be continuing our work to create a public archive of primary source documents on the history of the BC Green Party 1983-2000, which is now available at our shared storefront in Prince George. This means we are paying rent for another year and purchasing our share of the food for the office fish, Flo, Metatron, Narya and Vilya.
With more activities than ever and a growing membership, we have taken the step of hiring a part-time executive director. Ashwini Manohar is a long-time member and participant in our Vancouver reading group; with her newly-minted degree in Economics from SFU, she is kind of slumming it with us. So, we are very thankful to have her. Also joining the board are Sameena Siddiqui, an art curator, currently completing her PhD in Art History at UBC and Arthur Hatfield, a data security professional from Atlanta, GA and regular at our summer intensive workshops. We continue to support one fellow, former Victoria City councillor and tech entrepreneur Art Vanden Berg.
Our last activity of 2020 was to co-sponsor the Georgia State Green Party’s public forum on ending men’s violence against women. As we become larger and more international, we expect to be asked to partner with other groups more frequently in areas of common concern.
If you would like to support our institute’s work or participate in our activities, please consider renewing your membership.
Finally, a word of condolence. We lost another active member this year, again to cancer. Please join us in a short prayer or other recognition of Michael Parasiuk and the wife and family he leaves behind. Michael was instrumental in building the Institute in Vancouver and the North Shore; his spirit of generosity and gregariousness lured many to our events.
For the board,
Stuart Parker, Ashwini Manohar,
President Executive Director
