Coming up next week at SFU Vancouver:

Thursday, September 17: City Conversations – St. Paul’s Big Move
Time: 12:30pm   Place: Rm. 1600, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St.   Cost: Free. No registration required.

In April, St. Paul’s Hospital announced that it will be moving to a new, much larger site in the False Creek Flats, north of the Pacific Central train station. The move is more than physical— St. Paul’s intends to become less of a hospital to care for acutely sick people, and more of a centre to help people stay healthy. Primary care, instead of hospital stays and Emergency Department visits.

Briefing us on the changes are Darlene MacKinnon, RN, the redevelopment project’s Chief Clinical Planner, and Neil MacConnell, Chief Project Officer. 

 

Thursday, September 17: The Book of Negroes: From Page to Screen with Lawrence Hill
Time: 7pm Place: Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 West Hastings St. Cost: Tickets $17. Front row tickets $25.

What are the highs and lows of transforming a critically acclaimed best-selling novel into a major television mini-series? What is it like to write dialogue for Cuba Gooding Jr.? How do mixed race origins lead to an inspired creative career exploring issues of identity and belonging? Join Lawrence Hill, author of The Book of Negroes, and CBC Hot Air radio host Margaret Gallagher in an evening of stimulating thought, rich revelations and intimate conversation.

 

Thursday, September 17: Michael Mann - The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: The Battle Continues
Time: 7pm   Place: Rm. 1900, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St.   Cost: Free with registration.

Building on the findings in his book “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars”, Dr. Michael Mann will discuss the basics of climate science and reveal the tactics which opponents of climate change use to distort the science and attack the reputations of scientists.  He will describe both the hockey stick controversy and the broader context of skepticism in science and contrarians rejecting evidence of human influence on climate.

 

Thursday, September 17: Bill C-51 the Insecurity of Human Rights
Time: 7pm   Place: Rm. 7000, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St.   Cost: Free with registration.

Alex Neve believes in a world in which the human rights of all people are protected. He has been a member of Amnesty International since 1985 and has served as Secretary General of Amnesty International Canada since 2000. In that role he has carried out numerous human rights research missions throughout Africa and Latin America, and closer to home to such locations as Grassy Narrows First Nation in NW Ontario and to Guantánamo Bay. He speaks to audiences across the country about a wide range of human rights issues, appears regularly before parliamentary committees and UN bodies, and is a frequent commentator in the media. Alex is a lawyer, with an LLB from Dalhousie University and a Masters Degree in International Human Rights Law from the University of Essex. He has served as a member of the Immigration and Refugee Board, taught at Osgoode Hall Law School and the University of Ottawa, been affiliated with York University’s Centre for Refugee Studies, and worked as a refugee lawyer in private practice and in a community legal aid clinic. 

 

Saturday, September 19: Second Annual Rosemary Brown Memorial Conference – Confronting Gender Violence
Time: 8:30am   Place: Rm. 1700, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St.   Cost: Free. No registration required.

We understand today that gender violence has harmful, and often devastating, effects on women and men, children and adolescents, LGBT people and gender nonconforming folk. But Rosemary Brown’s insight into the root cause holds true: gender violence serves to maintain structural gender inequalities, often at the intersection of race, class, and other systems of difference.

Join us for a discussion about why gender violence persists and how we might create meaningful change through social action.

 

Saturday, September 19: Information Session: SFU's Public Relations Certificate
Time: 10am   Place: Rm. 1520, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St.   Cost: Free with registration.

Public relations is an exciting field with huge potential for professional growth, but you need a lot more than people and party-planning skills to succeed.

PR is about building a company’s reputation by managing communications and liaising with the media — it’s about telling the stories that matter.

Learn how our Public Relations Certificate can prepare you to succeed at telling the best stories for your client.

 

Saturday, September 19: Information Session: SFU's Digital and Mobile Marketing Certificate
Time: 10am   Place: Rm. 1600, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St.   Cost: Free with registration.

The world has changed. Media habits have morphed from static to dynamic, local to global, and 9-5 to 24/7. Public relations, marketing, communications, business, and political professionals are struggling to keep up with changes brought on by a radical new way of communicating, resulting in high demand for trained digital communications experts.

 

Saturday, September 19: SFU After 50 Years: Its Past and Present
Time: 1:30pm   Place: Rm. 1800, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St.   Cost: Free with registration.

SFU was born in a period of ferment and flux, when ideas about education were changing rapidly and the Western world was starting to feel the impact of student activism, the Civil Rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War. Promoted as an open, innovative university, SFU attracted more mature students and a far younger and more idealistic faculty than other schools. The stage was set for educational and political fireworks.

This lecture traces the history of the university, from those first exhilarating, confusing and profoundly educational years to the university of today—now one of Canada's most respected universities—youthful, energetic, rigorous, and still growing and learning.

 

Saturday, September 19: SCA House Party – Celebrating SFU’s 50th
Time: 2pm   Place: Goldcorp Centre for the Arts Lobby, SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 West Hastings St.    Cost: Free. No registration required.

New and current SCA students, alumni, faculty and members of the art community in Vancouver are invited to join us for a special kick off event to celebrate SFU’s 50th milestone.

 

Monday, September 21: Harperism: How Stephen Harper And His Think Tank Colleagues Have Transformed Canada
Time: 7pm   Place: Rm. 7000, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St.   Cost: Free. No registration required.

Thanks to 40 years of persistent messaging by the Fraser Institute and its neoliberal allies, the climate of ideas that made Stephen Harper possible will still be in place. Any government, no matter what it claims its program to be, will be profoundly challenged in bucking the prevailing neoliberal headwinds.

This presentation discusses the changes Harper has made and the difficulties succeeding governments will have in unraveling them.

 

Tuesday, September 22: Liberal Arts and Adults 55+ Meet and Greet
Time: 10:30am   Place: Rm. 2245, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St.   Cost: Free with registration.

If you are a new student in the Liberal Arts and Adults 55+ Program, come to our Meet and Greet event for an opportunity to ask questions, gain information about our program, and meet faculty, staff and other students in an informal and comfortable setting.

 

Tuesday, September 22: Creative Publics: Art-Making Inspired By Federal Election Issues
Time: 12pm   Place: Victory Square Park, 150 West Hastings St.   Cost: Free. No registration required.

Creative Publics brings together artists, students and community members to participate in art-making inspired by social and political issues leading up to the federal election in October 2015.

From September 10th – October 2nd, 2015, mobile art studio Tin Can Studio will travel to four sites and set up mix-media collaging workshops  where participants will have the opportunity to explore election issues while engaging in a creative, tactile activity. 

 

Tuesday, September 22: Planning for Peak Car: International Evidence of How Urban Development is Moving Beyond Auto Dependence
Time: 7pm   Place: Rm. 1400, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St.   Cost: Free with registration.

This presentation provides an overview of comparative urban transportation characteristics and related patterns in over 40 cities worldwide. It provides an insight into how these characteristics changed in the important decade between 1995 and 2005 when peak car use first appeared. The talk examines the phenomenon of peak car use at a national and urban level and looks at some of the reasons that lie behind it. Together with the advent of peak car use, it is shown through an original set of data, how GDP growth has now decoupled from growth in car use, particularly in urban regions, meaning that cities can now increase in economic well-being while at the same time reducing their vulnerability to peak oil and their transportation contributions to climate change, while simultaneously improving urban livability and the human attraction of cities.

 

Tuesday, September 22: Live Biennale | An Evening With Nathalie Mba Bikoro And Willem Wilhelmus
Time: 8pm   Place: Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 West Hastings St.   Cost: Free. No registration required.

As a part of LIVE’s 2015 performance art program, Nathalie Mba Bikoro (Future Monuments, Gabon) and Willem Wilhelmus (Mother Tongue Festival, Finland) will give a talk on their curatorial practices and discuss transcultural strategies in contemporary art production.

 

Wednesday, September 23: Writing Fundamentals Workshop (55+)
Time: 2:30pm   Place: Rm. 2245, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St.   Cost: Free with registration.

Are you stuck on how to write an essay? Having difficulty organizing your thoughts? Not sure how or where to begin? Sometimes staring at a blank page or screen can be agonizing.

This free workshop is for students who are pursuing or thinking about pursuing our Liberal Arts Certificate. The workshop is designed to help you learn essay writing as a thoughtful personal response to course content. The enhanced writing and organizational skills you gain will also be useful in your personal and professional life.

 

Wednesday, September 23: The Revolving City Anthology
Time: 5:30pm   Place: Rm. 1400, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St.   Cost: Free with registration.

The Revolving City: 51 Poems and the Stories Behind Them features a who’s who of the west coast poetry scene, selected from authors who have read at Simon Fraser University’s Vancouver campus as part of the Lunch Poems series*.

The poems range from the lyric to the experimental and address the theme of disconnection in an urban environment. The collection also includes short reflections, written by the poets themselves, providing readers with an intimate insight into the inspiration and meaning behind the poems. Together, this collection seeks to build community, extend poetry to new audiences, and reflect the rich diversity of the poetry scene both local and distant. 

 

Thursday, September 24: Carbon Talks - Climate, COP21, and Paris: Behind Closed Doors
Time: 12:30pm   Place: Rm. 7000, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St.   Cost: Free with registration.

On November 30, governments from around the world will gather at COP21 in Paris to (hopefully) finalize and agree to a deal that keeps the global temperature increase to below 2°C. The outcome in Paris could signal the future direction and ambition of global climate action. Many greet this optimism with cautionary notes, reminiscent of countries’ previous failures to secure a global deal, and muted expectations heading into COP21. There are already some hints of what we can expect in Paris, including the US, China, and other countries recent pledges to reduce emissions.

 

Thursday, September 24: Promoting Insecurity - Western Policy And The Degradation Of The State-Society Relationship In The Middle East And North Africa
Time: 6pm   Place: Rm. 1400, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St.   Cost: Free. No registration required.

Sectarian civil war in Iraq and Syria, an overt war of intervention in Yemen, continuing anarchy in Libya, repression in Bahrein and Egypt; jihadi terrorism across the entire region and intermittently striking Europe; hundreds of thousands of casualties of terrible violence; millions of refugees and of internally displaced persons; thousands of migrants trying each week to enter Europe illegally from the Mediterranean’s southern and eastern shores: the evidence of extreme human insecurity, of an ideological and cultural regression and of a degradation of the state-society relationship in the Middle East and North Africa is plain to see. This lecture will consider the role of the Western powers in contributing to this state of affairs and will argue that a change of policy would be not only salutary for the countries of the MENA region but also in the Western interest.

 

Thursday, September 24: Chris Hope - How Large Is the Bill for Global Climate Change?
Time: 7pm   Place: Rm. 1900, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings St.   Cost: Free with registration.

This lecture will focus on climate change policies in developed and developing countries with an emphasis on the economic and social costs of carbon. Dr. Hope’s research involves numerical information in public policy and the integrated assessment modelling of climate change. An economist, Dr. Hope was an advisor to the Stern review on the Economics of Climate Change and was the special advisor to the House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs Inquiry into aspects of the economics of climate change.

 

Thursday, September 24: Women's Equality & The Federal Election: Why Your Vote Counts
Time: 7pm   Place: Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 West Hastings St.   Cost: Free with registration.

The October 2015 federal election is just around the corner. It's time to talk about voting! Women fought hard and even died to gain the right to vote alongside men. It can be challenging to sift through the information from all the political parties during an election. How important is voting anyways? What impact does it have? Women’s Equality & the Federal Election: Why Your Vote Counts is a non-partisan public education event promoting voting among women and awareness of issues impacting women in the federal election. This event brings together leading women’s right experts, economists, community leaders, and candidates from all federal political parties for an informative dialogue on issues impacting women in Canada.

 

Thursday, September 24: Taking Back Canada
Time: 7pm   Place: ICBC Concourse, SFU’s Morris J. Wosk Centre For Dialogue, 580 West Hastings St.   Cost: Free. No registration required.

Dr. Pamela D. Palmater is a Mi’kmaw citizen and member of the Eel River Bar First Nation in northern New Brunswick. She has been a practicing lawyer for 16 years and is currently an Associate Professor and the Chair in Indigenous Governance at Ryerson University. She comes from a large family of 8 sisters and three brothers.

With introduction by Dr. Glen Coulthard, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science and First Nations and Indigenous Studies Program, UBC.

 

September 11 – 26: SFU MFA Graduating Exhibition
Time: 12pm   Place: Audain Gallery, SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 West Hastings St.   Cost: Free. No registration required.

This exhibition features three graduating projects by 2015 MFA candidates at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts. Instead of presenting their works under a unifying title and theme, artists Lucien Durey,  Curtis Grahauer, and, Jaime Williams exhibit their respective projects within the shared space of the gallery, autonomously.

 

September 18 – October 16: Hidden Pasts, Digital Futures: Circa 1948
Time: 1pm   Place: Westbank Woodward’s Atrium at Abbott and Cordova Street   Cost: Free with registration.

This remarkable collection of culturally dynamic exhibits has been curated to showcase the best in comparative interactive technologies. Step into three dimensional worlds and be transported to heritage sites a world away. Tour guides will speak to the technology, art, and narrative of each exhibit. This collected experience that will allow you to imagine how immersive technologies might be used in our future. 

Hidden Pasts, Digital Futures: A Festival of Immersive Arts is offered as three site-specific tours. Circa 1948, created by the NFB Digital Studio and Stan Douglas, is situated in the Woodward’s Atrium. Two additional tours Place-Hampi + and Pure Land+, are offered on alternating days at SFU's Goldcorp Centre. 

 

Philosopher’s Cafes

 

Thursday, September 17: Vancouver’s Crazy Property Market

Friday, September 18: Internet Relationships

Wednesday, September 23: How Are You Becoming Yourself?

Thursday, September 24: Bike Café | Bike Lanes in Vancouver: Transportation Solution or a Symptom of Suspect Civic Planning?

Friday, September 25: Exploring Arts Practice as a Spiritual Quest