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York U. Millennial Wisdom Symposium: Making Up Toronto: Literary Invention; Archeological Reality?
The final downtown event, entitled Making Up Toronto: Literary Invention; Archeological Reality?, is part of the Millennial Wisdom Symposium series organized by York University's Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies along with the Royal Ontario Museum. The symposium, which explores how we recreate the past in contemporary culture, is the brainchild of Susan Swan, York Professor, novelist and Robarts Millennial Scholar.
"We as Torontonians can be oblivious to the history that surrounds us," said Swan. "As we walk down the street, we are treading unknowingly along the same paths created, and re-created, by the Huron and Iroquois, European traders, rebels, Loyalists, and Canadian soldiers off to war. Long after we are gone, future generations will also walk along the same paths. So whether we know it or not, we are constantly shaping our city's evolution. I have invited two renowned writers and a leading archeologist to plot a map, guiding us through the hidden past that makes up Toronto," she said.
What did Toronto look like before the first white settlers? How did others abroad see us? What can the writings of one-time Toronto visitors/residents and literary greats William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway tell us about our city? These questions, and others, will be explored by the following:
Anne Michaels will discuss her internationally acclaimed novel, Fugitive Pieces (McClelland & Stewart, 1996), about a Holocaust survivor who is rescued by a Greek archeologist and taken to live in Toronto. Fugitive Pieces received the City of Toronto Book Award, the Trillium Award, and was short-listed for the 1996 Giller Prize for Fiction. Michaels has also written two books of poetry The Weight of Oranges (McClelland & Stewart, 1997) and Miner's Pond (McClelland & Stewart, 1991).
Greg Gatenby, artistic director of Toronto's Harbourfront Reading Series, will discuss Toronto's literary past starting with Voltaire -- who dismissed Canada as "a few unclaimed acres of snow"-- and move ahead to the current international renaissance in Canadian literature under authors like Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje. He is author of the recently released book, Toronto: A Literary Guide (McArthur & Co, 1999), which recounts the experiences of international and Canadian writers who have either visited or lived in Toronto, including: William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Elizabeth Smart and Matt Cohen. Gatenby, who has also published numerous books of poetry, is author of The Wild Is Always There: Canada Through the Eyes of Foreign Writers (Knopf, 1993).
Dr. Mima Kapches is the president of the Ontario Archeological Society and a Royal Ontario Museum curator specializing in southern Ontario's Iroquoian-speaking peoples. She will reveal a Toronto few will recognize, discussing how the inhabited area looked before the arrival of European settlers. Kapches is currently writing a non-fiction account of Toronto's origins called Toronto's Hidden Past, soon to be released.
The Millennial Wisdom Symposium series, which opened in October and runs through to April, has included such luminaries as Alberto Manguel, Ronald Wright, Carol Christ, Rosalind Miles, Dionne Brand, Karen Connelly and Tomson Highway. The next symposium event is the annual Robarts Lecture, Tuesday, March 21, 3 p.m., York University Senate Chamber, and will feature Prof. Swan whose topic is The Writer's Conscience: (or why reports on the death of the author have been greatly exaggerated). For a complete agenda of events, please visit: http://www.robarts.yorku.ca.
For more information, please contact:
Prof. Susan Swan
Sine MacKinnon
Ken Turriff |
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