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The Thomas More Institute has a variety of courses on offer this spring. Whether you’re looking for a deep dive into literature or philosophy, or a shorter but no less compelling look at cultural topics, you will find something to tempt you. Sign up early; courses are filling quickly.

Twelve-Week Courses

A Disturbing Disquiet: The Fiction of Patricia Highsmith

Starts March 13 • Online • Thursdays 1:30 – 3:30 p.m.

Patricia Highsmith’s noir fiction will be the focus of this course that looks at this “poet of apprehension,” as Graham Greene once called her. Highsmith probes the underbelly of the human psyche, compelling her readers to reflect upon what dark secrets lurk within ordinary middle-class lives. Is there at the core of her writing an existential message about our post-modern condition – do we live in a moral vacuum where virtues are willingly shelved and amoral actions justified?

The Humanists: Exploring What It Means to Be Human

Starts March 10 • Atwater • Mondays 6:15 – 8:15 p.m.

What does it mean to be human? How did humanists envision the role of religion in our lives? How does our shared humanity transcend cultural and political borders? These and other questions will be explored in this course anchored by Sarah Bakewell’s new book Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope.

Six-Week Courses

Imagining Medea: From Myth to Modernity

Starts April 17 • Atwater • Thursdays 6:15 – 8:15 p.m.

This course will consider the figure of Medea from Greek mythology and explore how her story has been reimagined and recontextualized from classical antiquity until the present day. What draws us to characters who commit horrifying acts of violence? Why is Medea associated with both creativity and destruction? How have modern writers reconceived her identity?

Repatriation of Cultural Artifacts: Ethical and Practical Considerations

Starts April 15 • Atwater • Tuesdays 1:30 – 3:30 p.m.

The joy of seeing the treasures of the world on display in the Louvre in Paris or the Met in New York or the British Museum in London belie a darker history of the acquisition of such artifacts. What is the role of the museum in modernity? Should works taken as trophies in an imperial age be returned to their homelands? What would it mean if the world’s greatest museums were emptied of their treasures?

Shakespeare in the Spring 2025: Light and Darkness in As You Like It and Macbeth

Starts April 15 • Atwater and Online • Tuesdays 1:30 – 3:30 p.m.

This year’s celebration of Shakespeare is a study of contrasts, looking at his lightest comedy, As You Like It, and his darkest of tragedies, Macbeth, both coming to the Stratford Festival this summer. We will explore these plays in depth, watching videos of scenes played by some of the best theatrical companies and reading interpretations by Emma Smith, Marjorie Garber, and others.  Shakespeare’s plays become demystified, and their brilliance revealed as we explore them together.

Four-Week Courses

A Beginner’s Guide to Jazz

Starts May 1 • Atwater • Thursdays 1:30 – 3:30 p.m.

As Montreal prepares to welcome some of Jazz’s most prominent performers at our annual Jazz Festival, we will dive into an understanding of jazz music and its origins, from the descendants of African slaves to the early 20^th century recordings of Louis Armstrong, on to the very latest jazz trends. The course will also survey the program of the Festival de Jazz International de Montréal, and concerts will be recommended.

Exploring Montreal’s Urban Nature

Starts April 18 • Atwater • Fridays 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Join us on a walking journey into the hidden wildness of our urban landscape during this four-week course that will allow us to experience nature within Montreal. The walks will run from 10:00 to noon, rain or shine, and will explore the following sites: Mount Royal, Parc des Rapides, the Falaise Saint-Jacques, and Angrignon Park.

Portraits and Still Life

Starts March 26 • Atwater and Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) • Wednesday 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.

Anita Grants is back with another instalment of her popular course focusing on different highlights of the MMFA’s permanent collection. This spring, we will be looking at portraits and still life paintings. Two in-person lectures will introduce the works we will be looking at in subsequent museum visits. The week following each lecture, we will meet at the MMFA to engage with the art discussed directly.

A Tribute to Judith Gray: Student, Course Leader & Designer, and Past President 

Fall 2024

On May 9, 2024, TMI past president Judith Gray passed away peacefully at 85 years old. Judith is remembered fondly as a brilliant woman known for her generosity, curiosity, and wit. 

Born in St. Catharines, Ontario, Judith was the daughter of a working-class family from Scotland. She obtained her nursing degree from Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, where she was valedictorian of her class.  

In the late 1950s, she married Ian Gray, with whom she had two children, Katy and Glenn (d. 1981). While in Toronto, Judith worked at the Toronto Psychiatric Hospital.  

When Ian was transferred to Montreal, Judith became the coordinator of nurse training at Vanier College. She started to take courses at the Thomas More Institute shortly thereafter, seeking an outlet for her curiosity and intellect. In 1980, Judith earned her Bachelor of Arts Degree at Bishop’s University through TMI. After graduation she became involved in the production of courses. In 1981 she took part in a TMI course on “Health, Well-Being, and Sanity” offered once a week during lunch hour at the Royal Bank Auditorium in Place Ville Marie. She designed and/or led in dozens of courses at TMI, such as “Freud and Women” (1989), “Stalking the Human Good” (1994), “Meeting/À la rencontre de Bernard Lonergan” (2000), and “Gertrude and Alice–The Fiction of Autobiography” (1911). 

Judith and Ian fell in love with the peace and beauty of the Eastern Townships. They eventually purchased a home in Foster, Québec, close to Knowlton, on 60 acres of woods. With retirement, they moved permanently to their beloved home in the country, but Judith remained involved at TMI, despite the distance.  

In 2003, when she heard the Search Committee was having trouble finding a new president to replace Eileen de Neeve, Judith volunteered. “She was the type of person to see a need and to step up and offer help,” comments Anne Fitzpatrick, who was Board Chair at the time. “Everyone liked Judith; she didn’t stand on ceremony, and she had a way of making things better.” Barbara Rolston, who worked at TMI during Judith’s term (2003-06), considers Judith as among TMI’s finest presidents. “She was so upbeat, so curious. It was a fun time.” Being president wasn’t just about administration for Judith. She understood the mission of the Institute and encouraged every aspect of its work, from fundraising to course design. Judith came into office when some tension existed, and she was able to lighten the atmosphere. She clarified roles, letting staff know exactly what she needed of them. Diane Moreau, who also worked at TMI at this time, describes her as “courageous and gutsy.” She was “a straight shooter” who “always told the truth” and who found a way to do so diplomatically, often making use of her sharp wit and fine sense of humour. 

Judith came into her own at TMI. The Institute provided a place where she could pursue her passions, engage her mind, and explore ideas where they led her. Diane Moreau notes that she had an exceptional talent for “mining a text.” Anne Fitzpatrick tells me she designed “wonderful courses.” Daniel Schouela, member of the TMI Board, speaks of her “warmth, humour, and probing intelligence.” “I really appreciated her passionate approach to [the Institute’s] commitment to shared inquiry,” he tells me. In 2005, on the occasion of the celebration of TMI’s 60th Anniversary, Judith said this about the institute: “[The majority of students at TMI] come to share their own burning desires with other questioning souls. This method can be truly called lifelong learning because it leads to no definite conclusions but over and over again helps us to use the insights that arise through our reading/discussion to change our minds, read more deeply, listen with attention and cherish the curiosity we make central to our lives.” Judith understood the mission of TMI because she found it incarnated in herself. 

Judith’s family will celebrate her life in a private ceremony to take place in late summer. In accordance with her wishes, they will travel to Canmore, Alberta to scatter her ashes at the grave of Judith and Ian’s son Glenn, who died there in a mountain climbing accident at the age of 21.  

TMI Student Profile: A Conversation with Charlotte de Neeve

By Dominic Varvaro, May 2024

Featured image: Charlotte de Neeve speaks with the TMI community at Spring Convocation

Savouring her hot chocolate, she displays a youthful bohemian spirit belied only by greying hair. Her soft-spoken responses to my questions in the cavernous market café cause me to lean in close on more than one occasion. Still waters run deep. This is the thought that occurs after my initial meeting with Charlotte de Neeve (pronounced de-NAVE-uh) at a local brûlerie where she’d bicycled – in the rain – to meet.

She is at home in Montreal. “It’s where I’m from,” she asserts, in spite of having lived in British Columbia, Texas, Massachusetts, and Ontario before returning two years ago. She tested Montreal’s CEGEP waters in the 1970s, a time when she was “playing piano for ballet classes and just hanging out.” She still practises the art of “playing music for fun or with friends.”

In 1980, she acquired a registered-nursing qualification from Vanier College and then followed her future husband to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver where she obtained a B.A. in Latin and Medieval Studies. “It was the Latin,” she corrects me when I ask about her reasons for choosing medieval studies. She emphasizes how important the study of language is to her and that Latin was simply something that interested her. “I just wanted to do it,” she reaffirms.

She earned a second undergraduate degree and then a Masters in Nursing from the University of Ottawa and began working as a nurse practitioner in 2013. “You learn a lot about medicine… and about how clinical decisions are made,” she explains of her small-town practice in a rural Cornwall clinic. “I was on my own a lot,” she says of its appeal. Today, she works as a nurse at a Residence privée pour aînés. When I press her on the nature of a vocation that intersects the purview of nurse and doctor, she tells me that she enjoys the interactions and that her practice is a serendipitous opportunity to socialize with the community she serves.

Both her parents were long-time supporters of the Thomas More Institute, so she feels it’s natural that she should return to the liberal arts there, to “stay connected to the world of ideas.” Her first hands-on TMI experience was a Gatineau-based in-person course on the Canadian constitution led by renowned TMI volunteer Pierrot Lambert, “which was fun,” she says. She extols the connections she made with the local community and the open discussions that transpired under Pierrot’s leadership.

Her feelings about Pierrot are reciprocal. “[She] brought to our discussions her intelligence, her wide experience of social issues, and her fine sensitivity,” he writes when I ask about his recollections of their classes together.

She later comments on the collaborative and interactive nature of the TMI method, saying that she “enjoys the discipline and dynamic of the discussion…learning how to listen better and to respond with equanimity, or how to say nothing and wait.”

Charlotte earned a Comprehensive Certificate, celebrated at the May 2024 convocation ceremony at the Institute. The Certificate program—comprising several courses with literature as a central theme – is an advisor-led and tailored program that concludes with a substantial and integrative essay. She tells me that the effort she invested in the essay was “…like scaling a vertical rock wall with my fingertips.”

Her essay escorts the reader through the development of literature from Roman poets to the Romantics. It exposes the power and beauty of the written word by showing how storytelling helps shape the evolution of society. It’s a sentiment that is familiar to essay reader and TMI Chair Carol Fiedler, who contends the essay “…accentuates the interaction between the mythical universe of the imagination and the natural universe of our physical bodies.”

In the essay’s conclusion, Charlotte writes “Our ideas and words define us as human.” She floats an enthralling proposal that “…we should replace our political stances with poetical ones, exchange ideas rather than oppose them, and practice a conversation based on our shared, timeless and contemporary language of myths and stories.”

Toward the end of our interview, I ask about her reasons for returning to Montreal. She explains that she moved back “for six months” to take care of her ailing mother, who was always a source of meaningful conversation. “Not stories so much as ideas about the world,” she answers when I ask about the nature of their conversations, but then she looks away and changes the subject before I can explore further.

Charlotte sees the writings of Renaissance author Giovanni Boccaccio as “…a growing democratization in the business of learning and literature.” It occurs to me that the nature of her essay parallels her life experiences, that the highlights of her journey—the social interactions, the exchange of ideas, the critical perspectives she acquired, and the playing of the piano for her friends—are all a continuation of the democratization of our own stories.

Dominic Varvaro is a writer, photographer, and TMI student. His foodie creations can be found at @thesauceison. You can read more of his writings in Voices: A TMI Writers’ Journal.

TMI Volunteer Profile with Jim Cullen 

by Dominic Varvaro, November 2024 

We’re surrounded by a collection of sculptures and paintings “conceived in the young minds of Quebec’s artist community,” he tells me. The stacked bookshelves on an adjacent wall—replete with Plato, Ovid and Homer—hold the tomes that “founding members had in hand” when first building the Institute’s charter. The nearby wall hosting a list of baccalaureates, starting in 1948, boasts the brain trust that has graced the Institute’s halls and enriched its collective consciousness. He points to these artifacts with awe and pride. I can’t imagine a more appropriate locale to interview Jim Cullen, past president of TMI and long-time volunteer. 

Cullen was born in the seaside and coal-mining community of Stellarton, Nova Scotia. His banking father was transferred, with his family, to Montreal in the mid-1950s. Cullen went from an intimate Atlantic Canada community of 5000 to bustling urban NDG, cycling to school, playing hockey in the park, and eventually embracing the influence of the Jesuit Fathers of Loyola High School and College.  

He confides that the transfer was difficult for his mother, being so far from family, but the glint I see in his eyes as he recounts the adventures of his youth tells me the transfer was a happy experience for him. 

When I ask about the path that led him to the Chicago Divinity School, following the B.A. in Theology he earned through Université de Montréal, he talks of Reverend Elmer O’Brien, a Jesuit who chaired the “newly developed field” of theology studies at Loyola College.  Cullen was inspired by how the Reverend “created engagement” when he first heard him speak in a Loyola College auditorium, and by the Reverend’s “deep appreciation of theology.” It was a turning point for Cullen who, until then, had been considering a career in journalism.  

His journey of “growth” continued at University of Chicago’s Divinity School in 1966 when he moved to the Baptist Graduate Student Centre. It’s where he taught, attended graduate school, and formed lifelong friendships.  

In 1968, back in Montreal, Jim married his fiancée, Maureen. He tells of how they were swept up in the 1968 Democratic Conference protests and of how they “endured…the tremendous turmoil” that then Chicago Mayor Daly’s police crackdown had on university protesters. He was also witness to the cultural stress that a military draft for an unpopular war in Vietnam had on America’s psyche and its “large impact on young people, especially speaking out” in protests and tectonic change of cultural mores. 

In the 1970s, in the midst of the province’s language law debates, Cullen returned to Quebec as a religion teacher at Bishop Whelan High School where he saw how enrolment was affected by “stricter language laws changed the composition of the school.”  During this time, he completed an M.A. in History and Philosophy of Religion from Concordia. 

1980 saw Cullen move to Quebec’s Ministère de l’Éducation. The dossier of responsibilities he managed during his 25-year career was extensive and included elementary and secondary Catholic education, securing Canada-wide funding for minority language education, supporting Services à la communauté anglophone, and representing the province within the Canada-wide Council of Ministers of Education. Most notable, however, was the period of transition where the “English speaking community took greater charge of the education of their children,” as reflected in his hands-on work with Gretta Chambers on the Advisory Board following Pauline Marois’ reform to secularize public schools and create linguistic school boards.   

He doesn’t argue when I convey my impression that the Institute is a magnet for critical thinking. As president, a position he held from 2006 to 2010, Cullen supported the way the Institute operated. TMI Director Daniel Schouela echoed the Institute’s appreciation for Cullen’s “wealth of diverse experiences” and for how Cullen “managed our relationships with the Ministry and with Bishop’s [University] with great care and skill, and spearheaded important modifications to TMI’s bylaws.” 

I ask him about the governance that evolved under his watch. He praises the groundwork that was laid by his predecessors and also the “beguiling and enchanting” influences of past directors Charlotte Tansey and Martin O’Hara. In the same breath, he recognizes the dedication of the volunteers, many of them women, who “worked during the day and then returned [to TMI] in the evenings” to bring to life the “bold experiment” that is the Institute. Cullen goes on to explain his contention that “the Institute has two roles in the development of adult education,” one of delivering adult education content and the other of conducting adult education research. 

As we wrap up, he mentions a 1980 interview that O’Hara conducted with artist, teacher, and TMI graduate Louis Belzile. Cullen maintains that “TMI places art next to text as an interpretive place for students.” It was Belzile’s position, regarding public school art classes and what he described as The Privileged Moment (https://mje.mcgill.ca/article/view/7343), that art is a vital component of early learning pedagogy and that educational institutions must enable and encourage students to exceed pedagogic expectations. Not surprisingly, Cullen contends that the concept applies equally to adult education. 

Dominic Varvaro is a writer, photographer, and TMI student. His foodie creations can be found at @thesauceison. You can read more of his writings in Voices: A TMI Writers’ Journal.