Mary vividly remembers her first visit to the Montreal Planetarium in elementary school. The experience left her with a sense of the wonder and awe of the universe and its expansiveness and a curiosity which led her to study advanced science and math classes in high school, CEGEP and then engineering at McGill University.

Donna spent her career studying lasers and their application to our lives. A visit to the Ontario Science Centre with her dad at just ten years old was the first time she ever saw one. The experience sparked her curiosity and interest and led her to the work she does now.

Ashley Rose works at the intersection of the humanities and sciences, thinking about how we talk about science and technology, especially in spaces open to the general public.

Science centres remind all three of us that science is for everyone. This is particularly true for children.

At a time when trust is declining across many sectors, it remains high in science – this is because of efforts like science centres which bring science to everyone. They’re a conduit for kids to discover the wonders of science and learn to respect scientific expertise and the scientific process.

This is why the decision of the Ontario provincial government to close the Ontario Science Centre is so short-sighted and such a significant blow to public engagement with science and technology. This decision not only shutters a key resource for science education, it also undermines efforts to build public trust in science.

The Ontario Science Centre has been a beacon of interactive learning and scientific inquiry for decades. By closing its doors, we lose a vital space where young minds can explore and understand the wonders of science in a hands-on environment.

Science centres are dynamic environments where curiosity is sparked, and complex concepts are made accessible through engaging exhibits and programs. They provide a tangible connection to science, one that textbooks and digital media alone cannot offer.

Building public trust in science and technology is more crucial now than ever. In an age where scepticism about scientific consensus on issues like climate change and vaccine efficacy is alarmingly high, science centres serve as vital bridges between the scientific community and the public that they serve. By witnessing and participating in scientific experiments and demonstrations, visitors can see firsthand the evidence and reasoning behind scientific conclusions.

The University of Waterloo’s TRUST (Trust in Research Undertaken in Science and Technology) scholarly network is one important initiative aimed at addressing the growing mistrust in some areas of science and ensuring scientists and developers continue to engage in public conversations to create technology that is trustworthy by design.

TRuST seeks to foster dialogue and understanding between scientists, educators and the public. Its goals align perfectly with the mission of science centres: to promote transparency, engagement and education in science and technology.

The closure of the Ontario Science Centre in June and the Science East Science Centre in New Brunswick in February stand in stark contrast to the objectives of initiatives like TRuST. Without such institutions, we lose crucial platforms for public education and engagement. Science centres also contribute to a community’s cultural and intellectual fabric. They inspire future generations of scientists, engineers and engaged citizens.

We urge the provincial governments to reconsider these decisions in light of the broader impact it will have on public trust and engagement in science and technology innovation. Investments in Science Centres are investments in our collective future, ensuring that science and technology continue to progress hand-in-hand with public engagement.

Both provincial and federal funding for science in Canada plays a critical role in earning and maintaining public trust in science and technology, much like the efforts of science centres. Such funding supports a wide range of research initiatives, from fundamental science to applied technologies, ensuring that scientific discoveries and innovations are made in the public interest. By providing the necessary resources for rigorous, peer-reviewed research, federal funding helps to ensure that scientific findings are reliable and unbiased.

As we face complex global challenges such as climate change, public health crises, and technological disruption, sustained investment in scientific research is essential for fostering informed public dialogue and decision-making. Just as science centres serve as vital bridges between the scientific community and the public, federal funding ensures that these connections remain strong and that science continues to progress hand-in-hand with public engagement.

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About the authors:

Mary Wells is the Dean of Engineering at the University of Waterloo.

Donna Strickland is a Nobel laureate and professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Waterloo.

Ashley Mehlenbacher is a Canada Research Chair in Science, Health, and Technology Communication at the University of Waterloo.

The post Shutting down the Ontario Science Centre undermines efforts to build public trust appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

We need to find ways to ensure that people remain healthy for as long as possible as they get older. Scientists in the field of geroscience are working on this and their research could have a profound effect on how Canadians age. Geroscience seeks to understand the genetic, molecular, and biological mechanisms of aging and their relationship to age-related diseases. Knowledge of these mechanisms could enable scientists to manipulate or slow the aging process.

Advancing age is a major risk factor for many diseases, including cancer, dementia and heart disease. Research has already shown that healthy aging behaviours, such as exercising and eating a healthy diet, can decrease the incidence of these diseases by changing the mechanisms of aging.

Expanding on this, the promise of geroscience is that medications and other interventions can alter the mechanisms of aging reducing the occurrence of chronic disease with age and producing more years of good health during our lifespan. A byproduct of this may also be increased longevity. Once the realm of science fiction, the field is rapidly advancing with extensive study in laboratories and early phase trial in humans starting in countries around the world.

In addition to novel compounds, researchers are also examining whether medications currently licensed to treat specific illnesses could also work to slow the aging process. An example of this is a trial planned in the United States assessing whether the diabetes drug metformin can delay the development or slow the progression of aging related chronic diseases. Another drug, rapamycin, currently used to prevent rejection in organ transplants, is also being studied for its anti-aging effects.

There are many challenges that need to be overcome before anti-aging therapies are widely available. These include developing the frameworks of how they are studied in humans starting with how they are judged to be effective. A key consideration is how long should the trials be? A drug may have short term benefit but may cause adverse effects, such as cancer, when taken for the long term. This is especially important for medications that would need to be taken for the rest of an individual’s life. Ethics committees will need to be vigilant that participants in these types of trials are not lured by potential benefits while possible downsides are minimized.

Although, it is too early to say if these drugs will ever meet Canadian government regulatory approval, geroscience has the potential to transform how we age. Through pharmaceutical interventions, we could remain healthy, active, and productive throughout much of our older years, with fewer people needing long-term care. The potential benefits to individuals, society, and the economy are enormous.

However, there are social and ethical implications that need to be addressed before we proceed much further.

We need to consider issues such as who will get access to age-slowing drugs. Should governments cover potentially very expensive age-slowing pharmaceuticals under their public health plans? While it might be expensive, it could help reduce costs related to treating and caring for older adults who are ill or living with frailty. On the other hand, these may just delay the development of frailty which will just move the costs down the road. If governments did not opt for full coverage, access would be limited to only those who have the means to obtain them, raising important equity issues.

We must also guard against those who would seek to hijack legitimate geroscience work and exploit it for their own financial gain by marketing unproven health interventions to reverse aging.

These issues were discussed at the Canadian Frailty Network and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Institute of Aging’s Geroscience Summit that took place in Toronto on October 26, 2023. The event brought together experts from across Canada and around the world to investigate how to further geroscience research in this country such that the promise of geroscience is reached for the benefit of all Canadians.

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About the authors:

John Muscedere is CEO of the Canadian Frailty Network and a Professor in the School of Medicine at Queen’s University.

Jane Rylett is Scientific Director of the CIHR Institute of Aging, a Professor in the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at Western University, and a Scientist at the Robarts Research Institute. (The views expressed herein are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of CIHR.)

The post Geroscience: social and ethical implications appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

What is your channel called and what is it about?

My podcast is called The ʔasqanaki Podcast and it is a seven-episode series on Indigenous literature and music.

When did you start it? What motivated you at the beginning?

This project started in 2021, and to be honest, my motivation was meeting amazing collaborators, G.R. Gritt and Krystal Strong. I have always wanted to do a podcast but didn’t have the skills to do sound design and editing myself, and I also wasn’t sure where to start. Producer Krystal supported in grant writing and later project management, and G.R. Gritt was our incredible audio engineer, sound designer, and technician! Without their expertise, it would still be just an idea!

Who were you inspired by? Any influences?

Growing up, my dad always used to say he believed I would be on CBC radio someday. Most of my inspirations come from there- Rosanna Deerchild, host of Unreserved, and the late Candy Palmater of The Candy Palmater Show. I also love non-Indigenous interviewers like Tom Power of Q, and the original VeeJay, George Strombolopolis who I got to know from many years of watching MuchMusic!

How would you describe your audience?

I believe that my intended audience is Indigenous people looking to see their own stories reflected, and non-Indigenous people who are hoping to learn something new. People experiencing adoption, grief, and/or coming “out” as queer and trans will also resonate with the series. I hope my audience is as diverse and unique as our guests!

What is your creative process? Do you have people who work with you?

My creative process has often been solo, and for the content creation, that remained true in this project. For every other part of the show, however, we worked in collaboration. The conversations are all influenced by the guests on the show, and the show sounds so beautiful because of G.R. Gritt, whose music makes me cry every time I hear the podcast intro. It’s been an honour to work with our team and create this series!

How do you monetize your content? Do you also have another job?

This seven-episode podcast was funded generously by the Canada Council for the Arts. Outside of that, I have multiple other jobs as a speaker, facilitator, consultant, educator, poet, and emerging playwright. Most artists will tell you that in the gig economy, we do it all to make ends meet, but I should also say that I love having my job be different every day, and I don’t think I would be happy in a single position with a 9-5 work week.

What is your favourite piece of content you have created?

Oh my gosh! It’s so hard to pick just one episode, so instead I will say listen to the whole podcast! I think my favourite piece of content associated with the work, however, is something that some people might not access, which are the love poems I wrote to each guest that can be found on my website. Here, if you scroll to near the bottom of this page, you’ll see the “found” poem I wrote based on the transcripts from my episode with G.R. Gritt-there are poems for each episode that you can find on each episode webpage!

What is the best part about what you do? What is the worst part?

The best part of what I do is to be able to share brilliant Indigenous art with the world and highlight these incredible artists and musicians, sharing them to folks who may not have known they existed before the podcast!

The worst part of the work is ensuring we meet the deadlines and keeping on top of things like budgets and schedules. I would prefer to be doing the creative work all the time, and having fewer administrative tasks, but overall, we need the emails sometimes to make the work happen!

What are your future plans for your channel?

Right now I’m going to continue to share the 7-episode series, which I hope will be season one. We are currently looking for funders and applying to opportunities to look into producing a second season, but I am not in a rush because this content took so much love and care that I’d like it to go a bit further before we get into a new season.

Where can we follow you?

Instagram is the best place to see what I’m up to!

PAY IT FORWARD: What is another Canadian content creator that you love?

I love following Chelazon Leroux – we collaborated with her on a TikTok for this podcast, and she makes me laugh at every post!

The post My Digital Life: Smokii Sumac and The ʔasqanaki Podcast appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

Like it or loathe it, the government has proved itself substantial on many fronts: reducing child poverty with a targeted benefit and extending affordable childcare across the country, introducing and successfully defending a world-leading approach to carbon pricing, hammering out a new funding agreement for health care, renewing the free trade agreement in the face of an erratic American presidency, and steering the country through a once in a century pandemic.

Yes, there have been failures, delays and missteps. Pharmacare and electoral reform are broken promises. The longstanding consensus on ambitious immigration quotas is straining against a deepening housing crisis. The carbon pricing pause is a genuine self-own.

What’s missing, however, is not principally a lack of policy ambition but a lack of cultural imagination — of the kind that pulls communities and people together.

Despite the promise of sunny ways, the government’s nine years have passed with few uplifting or unifying cultural touchstones.

Of course, no Prime Minister chooses their time, and Trudeau’s tenure has been marked by many calamities: from the pandemic to the slow-to-come recognition of unmarked graves at residential schools in many parts of the country, to harrowing wildfires that first burned Fort McMurray, then Lytton before blackening skies across the country this summer.

Whether by disinclination or in part because of these events, there have been few inventive, generous moments that have helped Canadians connect with one another and see themselves in a new and positive light.

After all, Canada is the country that in 1967 showed the world how transformative a major event like a Centennial can be. Yet, the government’s lackluster Canada150 celebrations passed without any lasting memory or impact.

Despite initially naming himself Youth Minister and establishing the Canada Service Corps to give young people a chance to explore the country and serve communities, at most just 5,000 people — in a country with more than 7 million 15-29-year-olds — participate in its programs each year.

Canada’s prized and internationally admired citizenship ceremonies have begun migrating online — as though a mouse-click ‘virtual attestation’ can replace the memories and goodwill that flow from the thousands of community events and oath-swearing ceremonies that take place each year.

Incredibly, for almost a decade major new sports centres and cultural venues have gone unbuilt. Even the Prime Minister’s residence, 24 Sussex, has been left to rot.

This stands in contrast to the cultural ambition of the Prime Minister’s father, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, who along with Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson before him, gave Canadians nothing less than a new anthem, flag and national honours system alongside dozens of new cultural programs and institutions.

It’s too easy to say this was simply the spirit of the times. But in a country as vast as Canada, we will always need to create both iconography and opportunities that supersede our geography so that we can share experiences that kindle pride, belonging and optimism.

One moment that did stir Canadian hearts came during the early days of the Syrian refugee response when more than 100,000 Canadians volunteered to help newcomers escape their war-torn country. At its height, Toronto Pearson reopened its infield terminal to help handle daily flights. The Prime Minister and other dignitaries — including opposition MPs — welcomed refugees as their children got fitted with snowsuits alongside the other necessities of life in Canada.

Here was a moment that brought a purposeful culture — in the form of mass volunteerism — and policy together, and which illustrates what’s possible when governments support the capabilities of publics to do big things.

This was also the lesson of the 25,000 volunteers who ultimately brought the 2010 Vancouver Olympics to life, and the lesson we recite each fall as four million Canadians lace up their sneakers to support the Terry Fox Foundation.

Purposeful and participatory, not passive and remote: this is the style of a high energy, popular politics that brings people together and provides an antidote to the belief that strangers can no longer find common ground or that good policies are all a country needs.

***

About the author:

Peter MacLeod is the principal of MASS LBP, a democracy organization based in Toronto.

The post Trudeau Government: substance only gets you so far appeared first on Toronto Guardian.

Describe your charity/non-profit/volunteer work in a few sentences.

Regenesis is a community environmental organization striving for social and environmental change through advocacy and service in local chapters. We have a presence at 7 Ontario universities and are expanding into BC and Quebec. Our focus areas include food justice, cycling, the circular economy, climate justice, environmental education, community collaborations, eco training and habitat restoration.

What problem does it aim to solve?

Regenesis aims to solve a multitude of environmental issues including climate change, biodiversity loss and air pollution coupled with social inequalities and inequities. We truly strive to bridge the gap between accessibility and sustainability through our free/low-cost solutions such as reuse centres, farmers’ markets and bike centres.

When did you start/join it?

I joined Regenesis in April of last year but was involved prior as a volunteer, often photographing and participating in Regenesis’ many events.

What made you want to get involved?

I was very inspired by my fellow Co-Executive Director, Michael Jodah, whose compassion and empathy in the environmental and affordable housing fields made a strong impression on me when we first met. I was in awe of how tirelessly Michael works to build solutions while giving students and marginalized folks the opportunity to really make a difference. I also found it so fascinating how the Regenesis team could take on a multiplicity of so many different initiatives and work on scaling their impact through a chapter-based model. In this way, there is never a dull moment since we can work on projects that are unique, community-centric and give the opportunity to learn something new each time.

What was the situation like when you started?

I was pretty intimidated when I landed my role given my youthfulness, and to be honest I still am. Co-leading an organization with 8 full-time staff, 40 part-time staff and over 200+ volunteers is no small undertaking especially when we are tackling a plethora of planetary and social crises.

How has it changed since?

I believe I’ve settled into the role well, and I’m proud of our achievements over the past year – we hosted 60+ events across 7 chapters, diverted 14000+ lbs of waste, and had 43000+ visitors frequent our Reuse Centres.

What more needs to be done?

As a student levy group, we rely on the support of university students to make our initiatives come to life. Get involved by joining your local chapter, or start a new one!

How can our readers help?

They can help by donating to Regenesis. We are always in need of funding and connections to donors. We also have many opportunities to join as a volunteer.

Do you have any events coming up?

We do run events year-round including tree planting events, workwear: swap, mend and borrow events, group bike rides, and an annual inter-chapter retreat. Check out Regenesis’ event page to sign-up for these incredible events!

Where can we follow you?

You can find me on LinkedIn. You can also find Regenesis on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook, and visit our website for more information.

The post Charitable Choices: Lauren Castelino of Regenesis appeared first on Toronto Guardian.