The Centre for Canadian Studies in partnership with the St. Catharines Public Library presents their third Canada Talks event featuring Professor Gregory Betts.
“Unerasing Ourselves: St. Catharines, Canadian Literature, and the Past”
Wednesday February 25 starting at 6:15 p.m.
Central Library, Mills Room, Downtown St. Catharines
This talk attends to the troubling question: what becomes of the nation when we decolonize, when we really take our conflicts head on?
By looking at the history and counter-history of St. Catharines, we can start to imagine a strategy of reading Canada through its conflicts, without erasing any, while highlighting the various efforts to erase evidence of conflict. “Unerasing Ourselves” traces out a series of remarkable, improbable, and fascinating links between such authors as Frederick Douglas, John Richardson, Thomas D’Arcy McGee, and Harriet Tubman, amongst others. Provocatively, I argue that we must reconsider erasure as a central dynamic of the Canadian Social contract. For the sake of the future, it is time to think more consciously of the messy conflicts shaping this land.
Light refreshments served | All welcome
