There has been a significant expansion in the integration of digital healthcare since Dr. Bhatia spoke to Lifelong Learning Niagara in 2017. He will provide an update on the benefits and the challenges of virtual care and what’s anticipated in the future.

Join award-winning musician and songwriter, Jim Payne, for an entertaining and informative look at how Newfoundland and Labrador’s vibrant musical culture helped to sustain community life here from the founding of the first English community at Cupids in 1610 to the present day.

From ancient ballads and dance tunes brought here by early settlers from England, Ireland and France, to locally-composed songs that reflected the circumstances of their new and changing lifestyle, the songs tell stories of the struggle to survive in an unforgiving landscape, and celebrate the joys and triumphs of creating successful communities built from the resources of land and sea.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the challenges they faced in this unfamiliar new world, there was never a time without song.

This lecture is based on my book, The Age of Creativity, a work inspired by my father, the artist Tony Urquhart, who was born and raised in Niagara Falls. As my father aged into his eighties and continued his art practice, people seemed surprised that his creativity persisted into his later years. They often used the term ‘remarkable.’

I began to wonder why we believe that creativity declines as people age, and, employing my background in journalism and my academic training in research, I set out to discover if there was any merit to these assumptions.

In this visual lecture I will present my findings on aging and creativity through a series of personal stories and artist biographies alongside images of their late-stage art, and reveal how creative work, both amateur and professional, sustains people in the third act of their lives.

Who owns the grocery store you shop at? Does it matter? Author Jon Steinman thinks so. Grocery stores exert substantial influence on human and environmental health and local economies. Steinman believes grocery stores are the most influential of any institution in shaping the future of food. In Canada, two grocers command over half of Canadians’ grocery dollars. The largest five command 80%. With such an important function to play, how might Canadians ensure that our grocery stores operate responsibly? How might we ensure our grocery stores are our food security solution?While some have demanded more government oversight, another model of grocery store ownership is instead placing the governance of the neighborhood grocery store into the hands of the people most impacted by them – consumers. Most commonly known as ‘food co-ops’, these full-service grocery stores are owned by the communities they serve – specifically by the thousands of customers who shop at the store. Every year, those owner-customers democratically elect from among themselves a board of directors to govern the grocery store and employ its general manager. The model has been used for over 175 years but is now experiencing a resurgence of interest among communities that are looking to place this powerful institution into the hands of the people who rely on them.

The James Webb Space Telescope, the successor of the famous Hubble Space Telescope, has finally launched and is ready for science! The Webb Telescope, a 6.5m infrared telescope, is without a doubt one of the most complex machines ever built by humanity and the largest telescope ever sent to space. Thanks to Webb, we will have the capacity to see farther than ever in our Universe, peer through the cosmic dust sprinkled throughout galaxies and discover and study new alien worlds.This project is an international collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. In addition to contributing the FGS/NIRISS instrument, Canada and its astronomers are poised to be some of the first to use the telescope and produce groundbreaking science thanks to its revolutionary data. As the first few images and bits of data start trickling in, you will get a preview of some of the awesome discoveries we are anticipating, and what Webb means for the future of space astronomy.

Travel back in time with Egyptologist Laura Ranieri Roy to relive the adventures of the early explorers who ventured down the Nile in the Victorian and Edwardian age. What wonders did they bring back from the Land of the Pharaohs? From Currelly, founder of the Royal Ontario Museum to Niagara Falls’ own Sydney Barnett, you will learn about travel, exploration, and acquisition in Egypt during the golden age of discovery – including the story of Ramses the 1st and how he originally got to Niagara.