McGill-Queen's University Press Blog

Branding Canada Day

 

Branding Canada

 

Evan Potter

“As diplomat and scholar Evan Potter reminds us in his illuminating new book, Branding Canada, we must present a more compelling, coherent image of Canada to the world. We need to harness the tools of public diplomacy -- culture, international education, business promotion -- to present an image of a certain kind of country, with a certain kind of values, which reflects the people we are." Andrew Cohen, The Ottawa Citizen

It’ll be 142 years tomorrow since the British North America Act, and by all accounts Canadians are ready to celebrate the culture, heritage, diversity and history of the country. But diplomat and scholar Evan Potter, in his recent work Branding Canada, argues that this is also a time for us to start figuring out how we present ourselves to the rest of the world.

The Watch that Ends the Night, 50 years later.

 

The Watch that Ends the Night

Hugh MacLennan

"The Watch That Ends the Night is a novel of affirmation ... The vanity of human wishes, death itself, are part of the mystery to be loved ... I would not trade MacLennan for a legion of beatniks or a whole flotilla-full of angry young men." Queen's Quarterly

It’s been 50 years since Hugh MacLennan, famed Canadian novelist, published The Watch that Ends the Night, arguably his best work and a central piece of both Canadian literature and the Canadian historical imagination.

François Mai and the life and death of Beethoven

Diagnosing Genius:

The Life and Death of Beethoven

By François Martin Mai

"A remarkably concentrated biography deals smartly with his social relations, the women in his life, his conflicts with relatives and servants and the famously enervating custody battle over his nephew."
Arthur Kaptainis, The Gazette

In Diagnosing Genius, psychiatrist and physician François Martin Mai explores the relationship between health and creativity in the life of one of the greatest composers of all time, Ludwig Van Beethoven. Examining Beethoven's struggle with physical and mental illness, including deafness and depression, Mai highlights the composer’s extraordinary ability to transcend these troubles to go on and compose some of the most powerful and beautiful music in Western culture.

This Friday, Mai will be at the Sheraton Hotel in Ottawa, at 150 Albert Street, for the newest Arts Café: Love, Rage, and Altered States: the Mind in Austrian Music. There, he and virtuoso pianist Justin Kolb will be pairing their knowledge and their art to address the question of mind and music in the works of Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, and others. Doors for the show open at 6, and the concert starts at 7, with no cost of entry. The event is sponsored by the Austrian Embassy.

Mai has also been invited to give a keynote presentation, titled “The Psychology of Beethoven’s Creativity”, at the American Beethoven Society’s biennial Convention, from July 9-11th, in San Jose, California. You can find the program for the conference here.

You can find our earlier posts on Francois Mai here and here.

Upcoming Toronto book launch for Lise Winer and the English/Creole Dictionary

More from Lise Winer and the Dictionary of the English/Creole of Trinidad and Tobago

Lise Winer, editor of the “Dictionary of the English/Creole of Trinidad and Tobago”, is back in Canada after a successful media tour in Trinidad and Tobago earlier this year. A Different Booklist will be hosting a Toronto launch for Lise on June 19th, starting at 7 pm. Come by if you’re in town!

Catch Lise’s appearance on Soul Call, a Montreal-based Caribbean television show, on Saturday, June 20th at 10pm, on channel 14.

 

Earlier Post on Lise Winer

Leadership in Disaster

Leadership in Disaster

Learning for a Future with Global Climate Change

 

 

By Raymond Murphy

 

 

 

 

 

This century, the world is facing what is probably its biggest challenge to date: climate change, or the unequivocal rise in temperatures across the globe. The results include high levels of extinction, the melting of the polar ice caps and rise in sea levels, the destruction of ecosystems and systems of sustenance, and an increased risk of natural disasters. In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that as temperatures around the world are likely to rise at least an average of 2˚ C over the next few decades, the risk of both natural and societal catastrophe will also rise dramatically.

In this context, Raymond Murphy argues that learning from how we adapted and coped with natural disasters in the last few decades is crucial. Learning, he argues, is “especially important if global warming turns out as predicted by consensus science to be a huge environmental problem affecting all others, with extreme weather disasters and slow-onset calamities the outcome”.