As a follow up to this posting, on May 26 to June 2, I participated in the 76th Annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences held at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. The Congress is the largest annual academic gathering in Canada, with over 8,000 delegates from all over North America, Europe, Africa and Asia. It is an important meeting place to present research and debate some of the most important social and cultural questions of the day, and its multidisciplinary focus marks it as unique in the world. The theme of this year’s Congress was “Bridging Communities: Making public knowledge – Making knowledge public.” Through a series of academic and cultural events, the Congress placed special emphasis on women, equity issues, Aboriginal Peoples and minority groups.

I am pleased to note that the Doukhobors were the subject of several sessions of the Congress. I had the occasion to participate in one of the sessions, “Toponymy” along with several top world scholars. I presented a paper on “Place Names of Early Doukhobor Settlements in Saskatchewan, 1899-1907”. (An Abstract of the paper will appear on the Doukhobor Genealogy Website in the near future). At another session, “The Immigrant Experience in Canada”, Ashleigh Androsoff of the University of Toronto presented a paper entitled “From the Private Sphere to the Public Eye: ‘Redressing’ the Image of Doukhobor-Canadian Women in the Twentieth Century”.

Through participation in this exceptional world-level event, we were fortunate to have the opportunity to share our Doukhobor heritage and experience with members of the broader Canadian and international academic community, and in doing so, facilitate dialogue and understanding.