Kat Albrecht, our PROBUS July 8 speaker, kept her audience spellbound with the story of her evolution from California police officer, trained in Search and Rescue, to VanIsle (Nanaimo) resident whose mission now is to form a nationwide team of mainly volunteer “Junior Pet Detectives”. Kat’s career came about through a series of events which…
At our meeting on June 3, Paul Kolodziej spoke about supporting the STS-132 mission of the NASA Space Shuttle Atlantis, explaining the behind the scenes processes and technology, a brief history of the Shuttle program and amazing images and video from that mission. Paul was assigned to the Entry Systems and Technology Division at the…
On May 6th, Dr Ghazi Farooq presented an overview of the global Syrian refugee situation. It was interesting to learn that the Canadian private sponsorship program is unique in the world and one that is suggested as a model for other governments to use; 9,000 of the 26,000 refugees are privately sponsored. Dr. Farooq went…
Are you aware that you share 98% of your genes with a chimp, 44% with a fruit fly and 18% with a plant? Our April speaker, Dr.Ed Ishiguro, back by popular demand, shared with us some of his fascinating research, his subject this time being the decoding of the human genome project and the way…
On March 4th Dr. Martin Bunton, Associate Professor, UVic Dept. of History, took us through the modern historical basis of the Palestinian – Israeli conflict. In doing so he has helped us understand why peace in this region has been so elusive. Dr. Bunton is the author of The Palestinian – Israeli Conflict, Very Short Introduction…
At our February 5th meeting Dr. Robert Dalton introduced us to 20th century portrait photography by both “outsiders,” those without formal training and academic credentials, as well as preeminent art photographers such as Helmut Newton, Yusuf Karsh, and Dorothea Lange. Using high quality slides, Dr. Dalton eloquently critiqued a wide variety of black and white…