2020 Canada’s History Forum Program: Day One

Fabienne Colas

Master of Ceremonies

Winner of the 2019 Canada's Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Award, named 2018 Canada's Top 40 under 40, Personality of the Year (Arts & Culture) by La Presse newspaper in 2018 and recipient of Prix Relève Femme d’exception from Quebec’s Federation of Chambers of Commerce (Les Mercuriades), Fabienne Colas is an award-winning actress, filmmaker, speaker and business owner who works tirelessly and passionately to support and promote diversity off and on screen around the globe.

She is the ‘Queen of Festivals’ who created and manages 9 successful festivals in Montreal, Toronto, New York City, Halifax, Port-au-Prince and Salvador (Bahia, Brazil) - including the Montreal Intl Black Film Festival, Canada’s largest black film festival and the very popular Toronto Black Film Festival. These events, which attracted close to 1 million festivalgoers and supported over 2,000 artists, have welcomed top names.

Her primary mission is to continue to create platforms that show a diversity of voices, faces and points of view. As chairman of the Fabienne Colas Foundation, she supports, awards grants and promotes independent films and artists who, otherwise, would be invisible.

In 2015, Colas was awarded a Medal from Quebec’s National Assembly recognizing her leadership and contribution in the fight against racism and discrimination in Quebec. CEO of Zaza Production, she also sat as a board member on the Society for the Celebrations of Montréal’s 375th Anniversary.

She just started the McGill-HEC Montréal EMBA program (2019-2021).

Laura Madokoro

Dr. Laura Madokoro is a historian and Associate Professor in the Department of History at Carleton University. She is the author of Elusive Refuge: Chinese Migrants in the Cold War (Harvard University Press, 2016) and co-editor of Dominion of Race: Rethinking Canada’s International History. She is currently researching the history of sanctuary in North America. She is a member of the Editorial Collective for ActiveHistory.ca.

Mary Jane Logan McCallum and Adele Perry

Dr. Mary Jane Logan McCallum is Canada Research Chair in Indigenous People, Archives and History and Full Professor of history at the University of Winnipeg. Her research focuses on modern Indigenous histories, especially in the areas of health, education and labour. Her work includes: Indigenous Women, Work and History: 1940-1980 and, with Adele Perry, Structures of Indifference: An Indigenous Life and Death in a Canadian City. She is currently focusing on a project exploring Indigenous histories of tuberculosis in Manitoba in the years 1930-1970. She is a member of the Munsee Delaware Nation.

Dr. Adele Perry is a settler historian who was born and raised in British Columbia and has taught at the University of Manitoba since 2000, where she is Distinguished Professor in the departments of History and Gender and Women's Studies, a Senior Fellow at St John's College, and the director of the Centre for Human Rights Research. Her research addresses histories of gender, race, and colonization in Western Canada in the nineteenth and twentieth-centuries. Perry is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a past-president of the Canadian Historical Association.

Dr. McCallum has pre-filmed a video presentation and Dr. Perry will be participating in the live event.

Simon Telles

A graduate of the Faculty of Law at the University of Montreal, Simon Telles devoted the beginning of his career to defending the rights of the student community and the accessibility of higher education by holding various positions in student unions. It is as President of Force Jeunesse that Mr. Telles continues his commitment to defend the rights and interests of young Canadians. Alongside his involvement with Force Jeunesse, Mr. Telles works for the firm Trivium Avocats where he focuses his practice in the law of non-profit organizations.

Cheryl Thompson

Dr. Cheryl Thompson is an Assistant Professor in the School of Creative Industries, Faculty of Communication & Design at Ryerson University. She earned her PhD in Communication Studies from McGill University. Her first book, Beauty in a Box: Detangling the Roots of Canada’s Black Beauty Culture was published by Wilfrid Laurier Press in 2019. Her next book, Uncle: Race, Nostalgia and the Politics of Loyalty will be published by Coach House Books in February 2021. Dr. Thompson's current SSHRC-Insight Development Grant funded research explores how Toronto’s newspapers editorialized about theatres where blackface minstrelsy was performed between the 1870s and 1930s.