Algonquin College Speaker Series Presents . . .

The Algonquin College Speaker Series at the Pembroke Waterfront Campus has been attracting some of Canada’s most interesting speakers for more than 25 years. To register for any of our Speaker Series events please register online using the Eventbrite links below. This series is funded in part by the Government of Canada’s new Horizons for Seniors program.

Upcoming Events

At A Loss For Words: Conversation in an Age of Rage with author and broadcaster Carol Off

Thursday, January 23, 2025 at 7 p.m. (In person and online through Zoom)

As Donald Trump takes the Oval Office and Canada faces political and economic upheaval, author and broadcaster Carol Off warns that we may have lost the language of democracy– just when we need it most. “Words that we rely on to define and defend our civil society are either put to use for a different ideological agenda or gutted of their meanings, the values that they once stood for mocked and distorted, ” Off writes in her new book, At a Loss for Words. She argues it’s a challenge but also an opportunity to restart the conversation in a way that’s more inclusive, describing this as an “all hands on deck” moment for our civil society.

Speaker Biography: Veteran journalist, author and broadcaster Carol Off spent decades as a field reporter for CBC television and radio before she landed in the host chair of the flagship program As It Happens. Over 16 years in that position, Carol conducted more than 25,000 interviews, from the profound to the profane, and won numerous prizes for the show.

Carol is also the author of 5 award-winning and best-selling books, including The Lion, the Fox and the Eagle, an investigation into war crimes in Yugoslavia and Rwanda; All We Leave Behind, the story of a family forced to flee Afghanistan; and At a Loss for Words: Conversation in an Age of Rage, a deep dive into the language of liberal democracy. She lives in Toronto.

Register for the Speaker Series event here.

Past Events

Watch our speaker series with Jamie Bramburger on the 1942 Almonte train wreck. Based on his book, Sudden Impact-The Almonte Train Wreck of 1942, Jamie presents the tragic stories of the crash which killed 38 people and injured more than 150 others when a troop train slammed into the back of a Local passenger train on December 27, 1942.

Watch our speaker series with investigative journalist Julian Sher on the Steven Truscott case. In 1959, Truscott was only 14 years old when he was charged and convicted in the murder of a 12-year old classmate, Lynne Harper, at the Clinton Air Force Base in Southern Ontario. He spent ten years behind bars and then lived under an assumed name until he was acquitted of the crime in 2007 when the Ontario Court of Appeal called his call a “miscarriage of justice.”