Late to the Table: Canada’s Environmental Awakening and the Future of Conservation
Nov 10, 1:30 PM–3:00 PM
RIM Park
2001 University Ave E, Waterloo, ON N2J 4G8, Canada
$10
Organized by Third Age Learning Kitchener-Waterloo (TAL-KW)
Lecture by Dr. Rebecca Rooney, part of the TAL-KW Fall 2026 series “Eras of Turmoil: 1960s and Now”.
When the modern environmental movement burst onto the world stage in the 1960s and 70s, sweeping legislation and landmark international agreements reshaped how governments thought about nature. Canada, for reasons worth examining, lagged behind. This talk traces that history honestly, from the wave of environmental consciousness that produced the American Endangered Species Act, the Ramsar Convention, and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, to Canada’s slower and sometimes halting response.
Out of that urgent global moment, a new scientific discipline was born. Conservation biology emerged in the 1980s and 90s as a mission-driven field dedicated to understanding and protecting the diversity of life on Earth. Drawing on a landmark set of calls to action directed at natural scientists working in Canada, this talk asks what it means to do conservation biology in genuine partnership with Indigenous peoples, and why that shift may be the most important development of all.