Canadian Studies Announcements

In This Issue:

Program News

• A welcome message from our directors

News from Berkeley

• Waterloo undergrads achieve Top 8 finish at Berkeley AI Hackathon

Upcoming Events

• “National Identity and Immigration in Contemporary Quebec: Comparing Majority and Minority Perspectives”
• 7th Annual Canadian Thanksgiving Dinner

External Events

• 2nd Annual Silicon Valley Terry Fox Run
• National Legion Week / Battle of Britain Service

PROGRAM NEWS

A Welcome Message from Our Directors

Dear friends,

As co-directors of the Canadian Studies Program, we are thrilled to welcome you to a new semester here at Berkeley.

At Canadian Studies, we strive to create a community that promotes diverse perspectives on Canada and fosters cross-border collaboration. We aim to spark public conversations with thought-provoking public lectures, while funding research that enriches Canadian-American understanding. Our goal is to connect students, faculty, researchers, and friends who share a passion for Canada and its many cultures!

We would like to extend a special greeting to those new students who are joining us from Canada. We are excited to be among the first to welcome you to Cal, and can’t wait to get to know you. We want to serve as an on-campus resource for all Berkeley Canadians, so don’t be shy to reach out with questions. Our door is always open!

We’ll be hosting a number of fun social events over the fall semester, so be sure to share this newsletter with your friends to help us build an even more dynamic Canadian Studies community. We look forward to seeing you all at our upcoming events!

Hidetaka Hirota and Richard A. Rhodes

Co-Directors, Canadian Studies Program

NEWS FROM BERKELEY

Waterloo Undergrads Achieve Top 8 Finish at Berkeley AI Hackathon

A team of undergraduates from the University of Waterloo in Ontario were named “grand finalists” at this summer’s UC Berkeley AI Hackathon. The four students – Rajan Agarwal, Elijah Kurien, Ishaan Dey, and Joshua Yan – beat out nearly 1,200 competitors to achieve a Top 8 finish among the over 400 international teams competing.

The UC Berkeley AI Hackathon is an annual two-day event sponsored by UC Berkeley and Berkeley Skydeck, a university-run startup accelerator. The competition is open to student programmers from around the world, who are given 36 hours to develop a new project from scratch. Participants compete for the chance to win a $100,000 investment and exclusive networking opportunities with Bay Area tech leaders.

This year’s Hackathon was titled “AI for Good”, and encouraged participants to work on projects that address real-world problems. The Waterloo team’s entry was “Skyline”, a transit model which aims to reduce carbon emissions. The program analyzes transit routes by using machine learning and demographic data from the City of Los Angeles to model commuter behaviour. This allows it to optimize routes, increasing commuter efficiency and reducing pollution.

The Waterloo team weren’t the only Canadians present at the awards ceremony: Slovak-Canadian computer scientist Andrej Karpathy delivered the keynote speech. Karpathy was a co-founder of OpenAI, a leader in AI development research best known for creating ChatGPT. As finalists, the Waterloo team was invited to dinner with Karpathy. Now back in Canada, the team plans to continue to develop their project. They hope that Skyline could be adapted for use by urban planners and governments in other cities, potentially reducing transportation emissions by up to 18%.

Image: J. Yan, I. Dey, Andrej Karpathy, E. Kurien, and R. Agarwal. Source: Waterloo News.

UPCOMING EVENTS

National Identity and Immigration in Contemporary Quebec: Comparing Majority and Minority Perspectives

Tues., Sept. 24 | 12:30 pm | 223 Philosophy Hall | RSVP

Immigration and ethnocultural diversity have been at the center of debates in Quebec society since the early 2000s. These include: how governments should respond to demands from minority groups for religious accommodation; what are optimal inflows of immigrants to the province; and what degree of integration is expected from newcomers. What relationship do majority-group Quebecers expect to have with immigrants? And what relationship do immigrants and ethnocultural minorities expect to have with Quebec?

This talk attempts to provide some empirical evidence for, and reflections on, answers to these questions. It draws from multiple recently-published studies and the speaker’s in-progress research. The first part of the talk sheds light on how Quebecers define their national identity and the resultant ramifications for immigration and ethnocultural diversity. The second part of the talk presents evidence indicating an “identity deficit” observable among immigrants and ethnocultural minorities in relation to Quebec, and attempts to explain what may cause this weaker identification with Quebec.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Dr. Antoine Bilodeau is a professor of political science at Concordia University in Montreal. His research focuses on immigrant integration and the dynamics of openness to immigration and ethnocultural diversity in Quebec and other multinational states. He has led several large-scale survey projects investigating public opinion across Canada around identity, views towards federalism, and attitudes towards immigrants and diversity. Dr. Bilodeau is the recipient of Concordia’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Award for Research (2023), as well as the 2016-17 Concordia University Research Award. He received his PhD from the University of Toronto.

7th Annual Canadian Thanksgiving Dinner

Sun., Oct. 6 | 5:00 pm | Alumni House | Buy tickets

Canadian Studies is proud to partner with the Digital Moose Lounge for our seventh annual Canadian Thanksgiving! Join your fellow Bay Area Canadians for this annual fall tradition. Share a delicious turkey dinner as you connect with friends old and new.

General admission tickets can be purchased from the Digital Moose Lounge at the link above. A limited number of student tickets may be available; write to canada@berkeley.edu for more information.

EXTERNAL EVENTS

2nd Annual Silicon Valley Terry Fox Run

Sun., Sept. 15 | 9:30 am | Palo Alto, CA | Register

Help raise money for cancer research while honoring a Canadian national hero. The Terry Fox Run is an annual international event commemorating cancer activist Terry Fox’s cross-Canada Marathon of Hope. Participants will celebrate his determination and inspiring legacy with a 5K run/walk event at Baylands Nature Preserve in Palo Alto. Be sure to look out for our friends from the Digital Moose Lounge, who will be running as a team!

Funds from the event will be donated to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), a world-leading institution in groundbreaking cancer research and treatment. Donations are welcome from those who cannot participate in the run.

National Legion Week / Battle of Britain Service

September 15-21 | San Francisco, CA | More information

The second annual National Legion Week is from September 15th-21st. As this is the 100th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Air Force, the local San Francisco Branch of the Royal Canadian Legion will begin the week by hosting a Battle of Britain service on Sunday, 15 September at 11:00 am in the Presidio Chapel in San Francisco. For more information about this service and the branch’s activities throughout National Legion Week, visit the branch’s website.

Canadian Studies Program

213 Philosophy Hall #2308

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