Ontario Heritage Conference 2010 – Keynote Speakers
Katherine Ashenburg –Keynote Speaker, Friday Evening banquet
“Ontario towns in the main were the creation of builders, not architects and… reliance on pattern books left them free to mix, match, and improvise when they saw fit. All of which makes Ontario buildings maddening to date, bewildering for the purist, and diverting for the walker.” This analysis by award-winning author Katherine Ashenburg appears in her first book Going to Town: Architectural Walking Tours in Southern Ontario. Devoted to ten architecturally interesting and “walkable” towns and a guide to Ontario’s most common architectural styles, the book won the Ontario Historical Society’s award for best regional history.
After a PhD dissertation about Dickens and Christmas, Ashenburg was a radio producer for CBC before joining The Globe and Mail as arts and book editor. Currently she is a lecturer, teacher and freelance writer with a column on design and architecture for Toronto Life magazine.
Dr John Ikerd – Keynote Speaker, 9.00 am Friday June 11th
Dr. Ikerd received his BS, MS, and Ph.D. degrees in agricultural economics from the University of Missouri. After working in private industry he spent thirty years at various American universities. Since retiring in 2000, he writes and speaks extensively on issues related to sustainability with an emphasis on economics and agriculture. Ikerd is author of Sustainable Capitalism, A Return to Common Sense, Small Farms are Real Farms, and Crisis and Opportunity: Sustainability in American Agriculture.
Dr. Ikerd asserts that “people are beginning to realise we must protect, conserve, and regenerate the things of the earth if we are to sustain the future of humanity.”
More complete background information and selected writings are available at http://web.missouri.edu/~ikerdj/
James Lindberg – Keynote Speaker, 9.00 am Saturday June 12th
James Lindberg is Director of Preservation Initiatives in the Mountains/Plains Office of the American National Trust for Historic Preservation where he is involved in their wide ranging programmes. These include heritage-based rural development, Main Street Revitalisation, heritage tourism, Rural Heritage Collaboratives, Prairie Churches of North Dakota and the BARN AGAIN! Programme.
Dr. Jennifer Sumner – Keynote Speaker, 3.30 pm Saturday June 12th
Jennifer Sumner is Assistant Professor at OISE/University of Toronto. She became a Postdoctoral Fellow in 2003 with the Rural Studies Program at the University of Guelph, an interdisciplinary PhD program that focuses on sustainable rural communities. She is a Member of the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada.
Jennifer is also Director of the Certificate Programme in Adult Education for Sustainability. She has a special interest in lifelong learning, rural women in rural communities, sustainable food systems and the social economy. Her 2005 book “Sustainability and the Civil Commons: Rural Communities in the Age of Globalization” explores the difference between “corporate” globalization and “sustainable” globalisation.