This is a Free Public Talk at the St. Joseph Basilica on Friday March 20 at 7pm.   RSVP required.

Keynote: His Eminence Thomas Cardinal Collins

Archbishop of Toronto

Cardinal Thomas Christopher Collins was born and raised in Guelph, Ontario, where his father was the circulation manager of the Guelph Mercury and his mother was a legal secretary. He is the only son and the youngest of three siblings. His childhood home was situated behind The Church of Our Lady, where he attended and served morning Mass.

Cardinal Collins considered being a teacher or a lawyer but was profoundly inspired by his Grade 11 English teacher, Father Newstead, at Bishop Macdonell Catholic High School, who knowing him, suggested that he should consider the priesthood. In 1969 he obtained a Bachelor of Arts (English) from St. Jerome College in Waterloo. In 1973 he obtained two degrees, a M.A. (English) from the University of Western Ontario and a Bachelor of Theology from St. Peter's Seminary in London, Ontario. That same year he was ordained to the priesthood on May 5, 1973 in the Cathedral of Christ the King, Hamilton, by Most Reverend Paul Reding.

While studying in Rome, specializing in sacred scripture and the Book of Revelation, he received his Licentiate in Sacred Scripture from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in 1978 and a Doctorate in Theology from the Gregorian University in 1986.

After holding various academic appointments, in 1997 he was appointed as Bishop of Saint Paul, Alberta. Two years later, he was named the Archbishop of Edmonton. In 2001, while in Edmonton he was named Apostolic Administrator of Saint Paul. In December 2006, he was appointed as the Archbishop of Toronto, and installed in January 2007.
In 2007 Cardinal Collins became a ex-officio member of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops Permanent Council, the Chancellor of the University of St. Michael's College and the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, in Toronto. He is the Chair of the Board of Governors of St. Augustine's Seminary, and the Chair of the Board of Directors of Redemptoris Mater Missionary Seminary, Catholic Charities and Catholic Cemeteries and is a Trustee of ShareLife's Advisory Board. In 2008, Cardinal Collins was elected President of the Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Ontario.
During his time thus far in Toronto, Cardinal Collins has served the global church through his membership with the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, Congregation for Catholic Education and Commission of Cardinals for oversight of the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR). He has participated in the Synod on the Eucharist, and the Synod on the Middle East, served as an Apostolic Visitor in Ireland and also as the Delegate of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith for Anglicanorum Coetibus.
On January 6, 2012, the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI announced the appointment of Cardinal Collins to the College of Cardinals. He was elevated to the College of Cardinals as Cardinal Priest of San Patrizio on February 18, 2012.

 Dr. Richard Bernier

Faculty and Instructional Affairs Coordinator at Concordia University

Rev. Dr. Ian Boyd, C.S.B.

Founder and Editor of The Chesterton Review and the President of the G.K. Chesterton Institute for Faith & Culture, Seton Hall University.

An internationally recognized Chesterton scholar, he is the author of The Novels of G.K. Chesterton (London 1975). For many years, he was Professor of English at St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan. Currently he is a member of the Department of English at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. Father Boyd also lectures on the subject of "Sacramental Themes in Modern Literature." Among the Christian authors whose work he discusses are T.S. Eliot, Graham Greene, C.S. Lewis, Flannery O'Connor, Piers Paul Read, Muriel Spark and Evelyn Waugh. In nineteenth-century literature, he is interested in the work of such authors as Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Mark Doerksen

Mark Doerksen received his BA from the University of Saskatchewan in 2014, majoring in Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies. While also focusing on history, his main area of focus was Latin and Old English literature. Continuing this interdisciplinary focus, he received his MA in Medieval Studies from the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto in 2015 where he studied Latin, Old English, history, philosophy, rhetoric, theology, and medieval literature. In 2016 he enrolled in the PhD program in the Department of English at the University of Saskatchewan. Besides courses in English, he continued interdisciplinary study through courses in Historiography and Latin. His area of study includes Anglo-Saxon eschatological texts and the theological implications of philology in Anglo-Saxon religious poetry. He is currently working on his dissertation under Saint Thomas More College's Dr. Michael Cichon on the philological relationship between Anglo-Saxon eschatological poetry and the Germanic oral tradition.

Dr. Darren Dyck

Assistant Professor, Ambrose University, Calgary, AB

Darren Dyck is an Assistant Professor of English at Ambrose University in Calgary, where he teaches a wide variety of courses, including Medieval Literature, Victorian Poetry, Spiritual Autobiographies, and C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Inklings. Before coming to Ambrose, he completed degrees at the University of Saskatchewan and Dalhousie University and taught in the Foundation Year Program at the University of King’s College in Halifax.
Dr. Dyck’s primary area of study is Shakespearean drama, but his research interests, like his teaching, range considerably, and he also spends time thinking about the nature of myth in the work of the Inklings and the value of the Humanities in higher education.
He also tweets religiously at @ambrose_EN_prof.

Rev. John Kohler

Formation Team Member, St. Joseph Seminary, Edmonton, AB

Fr. John Kohler was born in Edmonton, Alberta, in 1980, and moved with his family to Calgary to finish high school. After completing a degree in philosophy at St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto (2004), he began studies at St. Joseph Seminary and Newman Theological College. Fr. John was ordained a priest in 2010 and served as an assistant at St. Albert the Great parish (Calgary) and All Saints parish (Lethbridge). He was sent for further studies in Rome and obtained a licence in Biblical Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in 2015. He then returned to his diocese with a special mandate to teach Sacred Scripture and as an assistant at St. Mary’s Cathedral. In 2016 he was appointed as a member of the formation team at St. Joseph Seminary and as an instructor at Newman Theological College.

Dr. Ryan Marr

Director, National Institute for Newman Studies
Associate Editor, Newman Studies Journal

Ryan “Bud” Marr is the Director of the National Institute for Newman Studies and Associate Editor of the Newman Studies Journal. He earned an M.Div. from Duke Divinity School and a Ph.D. in historical theology from Saint Louis University, where he also worked in the campus ministry department. Dr. Marr's dissertation on Newman's ecclesiology was published by Fortress Press in 2018, and he has also contributed chapters to Newman and Life in the Spirit, The Oxford Handbook of John Henry Newman, and Learning from all the Faithful: A Contemporary Theology of the Sensus Fidei.

Dr. Charles Robertson

Educational Assistant for the Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools

Charles Robertson has earned an MA in History from the University of Saskatchewan studying the ecclesiology of St. Augustine in relation to Vatican II and his MA and PhD in Philosophy from the Center for Thomistic Studies in Houston, TX, where he specialized in the natural law ethics of St. Thomas and their application to artificial reproductive technologies. His work has appeared in a variety of journals, including Studia Patristica, The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly, and Nova et Vetera. Charles lives in Saskatoon with his wife and seven children and currently works as an Educational Assistant for the Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools.

Rev. Canon Dr. Scott Sharman

Animator for Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations for the Anglican Church of Canada
Ecumenical Officer and the Canon Theologian for the Anglican Diocese of Edmonton

The Rev. Canon Dr. Scott Sharman currently divides his work and ministry in two ways: At the national level he is the Animator for Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations for the Anglican Church of Canada, staffing bilateral and multilateral dialogues with a wide range of churches and faith communities. He also serves locally in the Edmonton area as the Ecumenical Officer and the Canon Theologian for the Anglican Diocese of Edmonton. Scott completed his Ph.D. in historical theology from the University of St. Michael's College in Toronto in 2014, with a focus on the history and theological methodology of the ecumenical movement. He has also taught courses in Church History, Ecumenism, and World Religions at Newman Theological College in the recent past. He is married to Alexandra, and has three young children.

Dr. Celene Sidloski

University of Saskatchewan, Department of English and Interdisciplinary Studies

Celene Sidloski (B.Ed., B.A., M.A. (University of Saskatchewan), Ph.D. (English, U of T) teaches in the English and Interdisciplinary Studies Departments at St. Thomas More College and in the Department of Linguistics in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Saskatchewan. She is also the founder and director of Rebuilding Catholic Culture, a non-profit apostolate devoted to the exploration of the Catholic intellectual tradition through its art, literature, philosophy, and theology.

 Dr. Ryan Topping

Vice President & Academic Dean, Newman Theological College, Edmonton, AB

A native of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Dr. Topping earned an MA in Philosophy from the University of Manitoba as well as an M.Phil. and a Doctorate in Theology from the University of Oxford. He is a Professor of Theology and serves as Vice-President and Academic Dean at Newman Theological College, Edmonton. He formerly taught at Thomas More College in New Hampshire and held the Pope John XXIII Chair of Studies in Catholic Theology at St. Thomas University, Canada. Dr. Topping has published on a variety of Catholic themes and figures, from St. Augustine, to Dante, to G.K. Chesterton in academic and popular journals. He has published several books on Catholic culture and education, including Rebuilding Catholic Culture: How the Catechism Can Shape our Common Life (Sophia Institute, 2012), The Elements of Rhetoric (Angelico Press, 2016) and Renewing the Mind: A Reader in the Philosophy of Catholic Education (Catholic University of America Press, 2015). His forthcoming book is Christmas Around the Fire: Poems, Stories, and Lessons for the Season of Christ’s Birth (Tan, 2019).

His newest book, published fall 2018, is The Gift of the Church, volume 1: How Catholicism Transformed the History and Soul of the West. Dr. Topping and his wife have nine children.