Guest Speaker Isabelle Regout — Alexandre Pampalon, Musée des Cageux du fleuve Saint-Laurent Several generations have put down roots in logging camps. These men felled gigantic white pines. In spring, the squared timber was assembled into rafts to form 500-metre-long logs. The Raftsmen sailed in these wooden cages from the Ottawa River to the St....

Guest Speaker Phil Emberley Following WWII, approximately 40,000 Holocaust survivors resettled in Canada. (Ottawa became home to many of those Holocaust survivors and hundreds of their descendants). Phil’s father, Dieter, may be considered one of the more fortunate of those Jewish children to have experienced the dark days of 1930s Nazi Germany and the horrors...

Guest Speaker Jeff Wang, Author, “Beneath the Archway: Overseas Chinese in Ottawa since 1892” From the arrival of the earliest immigrants in 1892 to the unveiling of Ottawa’s Chinatown Archway in 2010, Jeff Wang’s meticulous research has brought to life the struggles, triumphs and immense contributions of generations of Chinese-Canadians – despite navigating discrimination such...

Guest Speaker: Christine Matamoros How can we explain the arrival of notary Louis Théodore Besserer from the Quebec City region, who settled with his family in Sandy Hill | Côte-de-Sable around 1840? He inherited the land from his brother. What do we know about this other Besserer? Discover the incredible story of his military service...

Guest Speaker: Ryan Stevens, Author “Barbara Ann Scott: Queen of the Ice” Details Ottawa's remarkable Olympic figure-skating champion, Barbara Ann Scott, captured the hearts of a 1940s post-war nation – the charming young heroine's inspiration coming at just the right time as two long, weary decades of depression and war finally drew to a close. Join...