Category: Massey College

Custom bookcase

In the Massey College room where I lived for three years (V:4, best room in the college), there was a sumptuous abundance of shelf space: two shelves extending the entire long axis of the room (probably 20′ of shelving each), plus this shelving unit between the office and bedroom areas.

Now, my generally excellent new third story room near Bloor and Bathurst is cluttered with at least 16 bankers boxes full of books, plus about 100 more books stacked in various piles. To ameliorate the situation, I am ordering a custom-fitted bookshelf from Inova in Toronto — 7’6″ tall, reaching from the floor to the edge of the ceiling moulding, and 5′ wide, stretching from a kink in a radiator pipe to the edge of the radiator itself. Since they are custom building it (in two pieces, to navigate our awkward staircase), it will be about a month until delivery, but it should be a major permanent improvement to the room for me and whoever resides here after.

The case probably won’t offer quite as much shelving as my Massey room, but it will be an enormous improvement visually, in terms of movement within the space, and in terms of access to books which I frequently wish to reference, especially as the development of my thesis continues.

2016 Walter Gordon Symposium — Indigenous reconciliation

The 2016 Walter Gordon Symposium (Word document) was about indigenous reconciliation in Canada, following the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

I attended every panel, and I am working on processing and uploading my photos.

A complex confluence of factors seem to have combined to make indigenous issues critically important politically all around the world. In particular, the resurgence of aboriginal peoples is deeply bound up with our best hopes for avoiding destroying human flourishing and life as we know it through climate change.

The responsibility to protect versus humanitarian intervention

In Massey College’s Upper Library today, Ramesh Thakur gave an interesting presentation on changing international ideas about the use of military force in response to human rights violations, emphasizing the distinction between the concept of humanitarian intervention and the idea of the responsibility to protect (R2P).

I got photos of the event.

During the question and answer period Jeffrey Goldberg’s article on Obama’s foreign policy came up – specifically, the comment to Samantha Power: “Samantha, enough, I’ve already read your book”.