THOUGHT AND CULTURE
FALL-1 2026
A LA CARTE
This is a series of 7 lectures we have put together for this session. We hope the topics will be of interest to you – you get to pick and choose what strikes your fancy!
1. September 9 th - WINDOWS 11 – In Person and on ZOOM – Atwater Library Auditorium – a 1-hour presentation followed by 1 hour of personal technical support. Don’t forget to bring your devices.
2. September 16 th – Bruno Paul Stenson - Montréal, U.S.A. In Person and on ZOOM. From the autumn of 1775 to the spring of 1776, Montréal was an American city. Discover how this happened, and why Montréal and Canada never joined the American Revolution.
3. September 23 rd – Alexandra Henriques - Emergency Preparedness - In Person only. A dynamic, interactive, multimedia presentation for adults or seniors. The basics and more to consider and plan ahead for everything from a simple hydro outage to an eventual disaster.
4. September 30 th – Clinique Mémoire – Healthy Ageing and Preventing Alzheimer’s Disease - In Person only
a. What is Alzheimer’s disease?
b. What are the risk and protective factors?
c. Why is early screening important?
d. What are the symptoms and prevention strategies?
e. What is the role of Clinique Mémoire and clinical research studies?
5. October 7 th - FACEBOOK – In Person and on ZOOM – Atwater Library Auditorium – a 1-hour presentation followed by 1 hour of personal technical support. Don’t forget to bring your devices.
6. October 14 th – Pamela Grimaud – Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel– a fashion- In Person only. Related history lecture on the life and times of the revolutionary French designer
7. October 21 st – Janet Torge – “I Can’t Believe I’m Old!” In Person only. Janet Torge,” back in the day”, was host of CBC’s Radio Noon, CBC traffic reporter, a columnist at the Gazette and a documentary film producer.
She recently wrote a book titled “I Can’t Believe I’m Old!” Though not an expert on the subject, she offers new insights, perspectives and finds the humour in growing old. Janet will be reading excerpts from her book,
engage us in a conversation about aging, and, if nothing else, give us a chance to have a good laugh at our last years.
ART HISTORY – THE MAGNIFICENT BAROQUE – SESSION IIInstructor: Lillian Elvir
We arrive at the lush, exuberant and magnificent Baroque. Time for drama, ornate and emotionally intense artistic expression. Named after a kind of irregular pearl, the Baroque gives us some of the best art. Think
of the Renaissance as a round, perfect pearl and the Baroque as irregular, dramatic and magnificent, a Baroque pearl.
Weeks 1-2: The Dutch Golden Age - Rembrandt van Rijn, Johannes Vermeer, and Art for the New Republic. Protestantism and the rise of a flourishing market for genre scenes, landscapes, and portraits in middle-class homes. Franz Hall, Rachel Ruysch, Jacob van Ruisdael.
Weeks 3-4: Spanish Baroque—Diego Velázquez, Realism, and the Court. The combination of strict Catholic mysticism and intense realism produced a new kind of art, neither ideal nor unreal. Francisco de Zurbarán, Esteban Murillo.
Week 5: French Classicism and the Baroque of Versailles. Order, reason and beauty in the court of Louis XIV, the Sun King.
Week 6: Visit to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
CANADIAN MUSIC HISTORY Instructor: Bob Wegner
Bob Wegner's six-week course covers the last century of Canadian music history from coast to coast, from Montreal's jazz scene in the 1920s to the explosion of folk and rock beginning in the 1960s. Learn about things like how a concert in Toronto led John Lennon to leave the Beatles, and how music influences our national dialogue to this day.
CONCERTOS AND ENSEMBLES Instructor: Roxanne Martel
This course will explore the various genres featuring solo musicians, including the concerto, the concerto grosso and concertante works. The focus will be on showcasing talent on a variety of instruments, the kinds of ensembles featuring soloists, and the soloists themselves who achieve that level in the music profession. There will be time spent exploring concertos for unusual instruments and music competitions that focus on emerging talent.
CREATING YOUR WELLNESS WHEEL Instructor: Georgia Remond
Picture a wheel made of several sections each representing a key part of life that contributes to your overall wellbeing. Each section is both separate and interconnected to each other. The wellness wheel is a simple visual overview of the dynamics of key life areas from health, emotions, financial, social, environment, spiritual, cultural and more. Working with the wheel can be a personal and creative experience as you craft each
section to represent your life/balance. All materials are supplied. 6 weeks of exploration, discussion, light reading, sharing and FUN.
ITALIAN LITERATURE in TRANSLATION Instructor: Lucienne Kroha
This course will deal with the ways in which Italian women writers (and one male) represented their perspectives and concerns about the lives of women in the context of their particular times and places.
We will start with two or three stories written around the turn of the nineteenth century and then move to the mid-twentieth century and finish in our own times, focusing on how things evolve and how they stay the same, as well as how these writers betray their own ambivalences about women's place in society. We will also pay attention to what aspects of women's lives these writers considered worthy of literary representation and how they constitute a response to male representations and patriarchal expectations.
Copies of the works will be sent to participants.
MOVIE MATINEE Encore coordinator: Marie-Claire Zirpdji
It’s really fun to watch movies together! It’s certainly more fun than watching them alone
at home and while we don’t have luxurious cushiony chairs like they do in the theatres,
you are not sitting with strangers. Come enjoy our movie selection and bring a friend or
make a new one!!
1) Begin Again - 2013 Romance -1h44 min. R.T. 83%
2) A Month by the Lake - 1995 Romantic Comedy - 1h32min
3) Small Things Like These - 2024 Drama - 1h38 min. True chapter of Irish History
4) Mary Poppins Returns - 2018 Musical - 2h11min
5) Molly's Game - 2017 Drama/Crime - 2h20min True Story
6) The Fabelmans - 2022 Drama/Coming of Age - 2hr31 min. Semi-autobiography of Stephen Spielberg
SOCIAL HISTORY PART IV Instructor: Bruno Paul Stenson
Yet more history of common folk and their daily lives. This time we cover newspapers, photography, stores, Canadian inventions, the Plague, and slavery.
1) All the Print That's Fit for News: A History of Newspapers
A look at newspapers, from their origin as handwritten commercial aids, to important political organs, to purveyors of current events, including the Montréal newspaper born of the American Revolution.
2) Don't Say Cheese: A History of Early Photography
Why doesn't anybody smile in old photographs? How did they photograph groups when cameras couldn't focus over a deep enough area for everybody to be clearly seen? How could they make colour photographs when colour film didn't exist? In this lecture we discover all this and more, including Montréal's William Notman, & ''Photographer to the Queen''
3) Everything, Including the Kitchen Sink: A History of General/Department Stores
Merchants originally specialized in one type of merchandise. The general store changed all that and led to department stores like Eaton's. In this lecture we see how it all cameabout.
4) We Thought of That: A History of Canadian Inventions
The list of important Canadian inventions is surprisingly long... and disappointingly poorly known. This lecture goes some way toward correcting that.
5) Plague: A History of the Black Death
Ah, rats! The Plague killed up to 50% of Europeans in the early Renaissance. Had the New World been colonized just a few years earlier, the Plague would have killed millions more. This lecture shows what happened.
6) ''Going, gentlemen, going'' A History of Slavery
This lecture traces the history of slavery, from its practice in cultures of Antiquity, to its brutal, commercial application in building Europe's colonies in the New World. And Canada did not escape the shame.
STORIES IN STONE Instructor: Ingrid Birker
Since Ingrid has been offering these walks for a few years already, and a lot of our members have seen some but not all, we are offering you the opportunity to pick and choose the walk(s) you want. You can also register for the whole series.
Monday, Sept. 14 – Notman House and Jardin pour Tous urban gardens. Meet at Maison Notman, 51 Sherbrooke St W, Montreal, Quebec H2X 1X2.
Monday, Sept. 21– Mount Royal Cemetery. We will explore monumental stones and find heirloom apples. We might even spot a fox or 2. Meet at the entrance gate located at 1297 chemin de la Foret, Outremont, Montreal. H2V 2P9.
Monday Sept. 28 – Guided group visit to l’ancienne Chapelle, le crypt et le monastère of Musee des Hospitalières. $12/person payable at the door. Meet at 201 avenue des Pins ouest. Minimum 8 people, maximum 20. Our tour guide is Laurie Ann and she notes that there are stairs to climb (about 20) between the crypt and the chapel and this tour demands a lot of walking and standing.
Monday Oct. 5 - Trees, seeds and art at McGill’s downtown campus. We will start at the oldest Black walnut tree in Montreal and continue our exploration of McGill’s leafy legacy. Meet at front door entrance of Redpath Museum, 859 Sherbrooke St. West, H3A 0C4.
Monday Oct. 19– Saint Joseph's Oratory of Mount Royal. National shrine located at 3800 Queen Mary Rd. in the Côte-des-Neiges neighborhoods. We will focus on the Garden of the Way of the Cross located on the mountain slopes behind the main basilica.
Monday Oct. 26 - Westmount District National Historic Site of Canada. We start in Pavilion of King George Park, located at 68 Croissant Belmont. We will explore the stones and architecture of the Victorian homes and secret gardens that sprang up here during the second half of the 19th century.
THE SHIFTING WORLD ORDER AND A RE EXAMINATION OF WESTERN CIVILIZATIONInstructor: F.X. Charet
This series will explore the history of Western culture and its role in the emerging new
world order through the prism of a recent major study The Golden Thread: A History of
the Western Tradition by James Hankins and Allen Guelzo from its origins to the modern
world that has garnered a good deal of recent attention.