Our scholar story this week is you! Radically changed times call for radically changed approaches to how we do business, and our summer internships programme therefore takes an innovative and ambitious new approach. We know what we, as a charity, want to achieve in our mission to promote Canada in the UK through education. We want to learn more about what you, our scholar, want to achieve, and discuss how we make a brilliant match between your aims and ours. We're calling this Bespoke Internships and we would love to hear from you.

We want to learn more about what you, our scholar, want to achieve, and discuss how we make a brilliant match between your aims and ours.
We have projects in various areas including: community outreach, alumni relations, social marketing, administration, archives appraisal, and knowledge transfer.

We’re recruiting 3 summer interns to work on these challenges and more. We're open to conversations with people from all disciplines and levels of study. We offer an excellent learning and CV-building experience, interesting challenges to work on, and perhaps, above all, some very talented, interesting and fun people to spend time with (if we do say so ourselves).

You will bring intellectual curiosity, commitment to education and to promoting Canada-UK exchanges, as well as a can-do attitude to new challenges. The timescale is open to discussion, but would generally be a 6- to 8-week summer internship, negotiable during the period from April to August. Given the need to work from home, we are open to expressions of interest from any location in Canada or the UK.

Please get in touch with us to start a conversation and to learn more about being part of a unique new learning experience. We can't wait to hear from you!

Bringing Equity to the Ice. Canadian figure skater Elladj Baldé took to Alberta’s Lake Minnewanka on New Year's Day, skating to “Like the Piano” by London-born Sierra Leonean musician Sampha. The lyrical routine performed before the stunning backdrop of the Rockies went on to become a viral sensation. Baldé, a Canadian skater of Russian and Guinean descent whose previous videos had been getting noticed by celebrities like Jada Pinkett Smith, brings fresh creativity and choreography to the ice, but also has a message to share.Please be in touch with us

“African. Russian. Immigrant. Black Male. Figure skater,” he wrote on Instagram following the killing of George Floyd. “Every time I step on to the ice I am a living breathing protest to a society as well as a sport that thrives on oppression and elitism.”

Baldé and the organisation strive to tackle racial inequality by pushing for anti-discrimination, equity, and inclusion of Black and Brown people in figure skating.

Shortly after the events in Minneapolis, he co-founded The Figure Skating Diversity and Inclusion Alliance (FSDIA) along with fellow skater Mariyah Gerber and coach/choreographer Michelle Hong. Baldé and the organisation strive to tackle racial inequality by pushing for anti-discrimination, equity, and inclusion of Black and Brown people in figure skating. Their six calls to action for National Sports Associations worldwide include (1) equitable representation amongst employees and board members, (2) policy changes, (3) education, (4) race-based demographic data, (5) media campaigns, and (6) program funding & accessibility.

Still from Elladj Baldé's Instagram video (click image to view full clip)

Sharing in a recent profile in The Guardian, Baldé says, “The biggest thing I can share with the skating community is bringing young skaters of colour into the sport. Maybe I can inspire them to be authentic to themselves and realise they don’t have to conform to the mould that figure skating has put on us for so long.”

Canada-UK Colloquium Nuclear Report Launched
Contribution by Anthony Cary

Introducing the Canada-UK Colloquium on the nuclear agenda last November, British Prime Minister Boris Johnston said: "For (50 years) the Canada UK Colloquium has brought us together to share ideas, cement relationships, and help build a sustainable and successful future for both our nations… If we are going to reach the game-changing goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, then we are going to have to be bold and innovative. We are going to have to move fast and keep nuclear power in the mix to keep our homes heated, our lights lit and our factories humming… Agreements have already been reached by the British and Canadian governments, our nuclear industry associations, and our national nuclear laboratories. The debate now is how to make it happen."

The meeting report, drafted by Globe and Mail science writer Ivan Semeniuk , included more than thirty recommendations on how to meet that challenge. It was released last week in a virtual launch, featuring remarks by Canadian High Commissioner to the UK, Janice Charette, and British High Commissioner to Canada, Susan le Jeune d'Allegeershecque.

The central insight that emerged from the colloquium, and that was reiterated at the launch, is that the climate emergency has fundamentally changed the terms of the debate over nuclear energy. The Colloquium concluded that governments now need to work closely with their respective industries – not least at the COP26 meeting in Glasgow this autumn – to position nuclear energy as an essential part of their strategy for addressing climate targets.

Nuclear energy has already been integrated into the Clean Energy Ministerials, which are the leading global forum for advancing clean energy technologies. At the 2019 ministerial, hosted by Canada, the International Energy Agency reported on nuclear power in the context of clean energy. In September 2020, another ministerial initiative, co-led by the United States, Canada, Japan and the UK, produced a separate report on the role of flexible nuclear energy for clean energy systems.

The Canada-UK Nuclear Cooperation Action Plan, signed in March 2020, provides a framework for enabling collaboration in areas of common interest and, explicitly, for “advancing the role of nuclear energy in combating climate change”.

It also includes a strategic focus on the development and deployment of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) with specific objectives related to waste minimization, fuel supply chain, regulatory collaboration, advanced manufacturing and financing.

The CUKC launch event emphasised the extreme urgency of the challenge, given the lead times involved in nuclear research and deployment. As one speaker put it, "the latest evidence of governmental enthusiasm for nuclear energy in the context of climate change is welcome, but in many ways it is 20 years late. It is now time – and beyond time – to convert good intentions into funded projects and programmes."

The 2020 CUKC Nuclear Report is available via University of Toronto's Munk School, link here.

Looking ahead in 2021, the next Canada-UK Colloquium "Federalism, Devolution & Covid-19: The Road Ahead" will take place virtually 15 & 16 May 2021. Looking into 2022, the hope is that the organisation’s 50th anniversary will be celebrated in London in May 2022, focusing on Canada-UK relations, which was also the topic of the first colloquium in the series, in 1971.

Enquiries about participation and sponsorship can be directed to UK Chair Mr. Anthony Cary.

In the spotlight this week is Anthony Cary, UK Chair of the Canada-UK Colloquium, career diplomat and educational sector leader.

Attached to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 1973 to 2011, Anthony served in Berlin, Kuala Lumpur, Washington DC, and latterly as British Ambassador to Sweden and High Commissioner to Canada. He was also twice seconded to the European Commission, and is no stranger to the field of education, having served as Commonwealth Scholarship Commissioner and as Executive Director of Queen's-Blyth Worldwide, a joint venture design to enable Canadian students to study internationally.

Anthony was educated at Eton College, and went on to earn Master's degrees at both Oxford University (English) and Stanford Business School (MBA 1982). And nothing about speaking with Anthony recently led us to suspect that, as a younger man, he hitchhiked right the way across the USA, drove to Sri Lanka with friends, or worked on a wheat farm and railways in Australia! His adventures keep him closer to home these days, enjoying hiking and kayaking and time with family that now includes eight much-loved grandchildren.

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