Royales Harmonies

Music from Oxford and Cambridge universities

In early October, the Salle Bourgie, the Tiffany-windowed concert hall inside the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, will host a concert including two intriguing and rarely-performed works connected with the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

From Oxford, comes the recently rediscovered overture to The Fall of Jericho by William Hayes.  It is believed to have first been performed in the 1740s in the Sheldonian Theatre, at an annual Commemoration of the Founders and Benefactors of the University.  Hayes is an unsung hero of the music of Georgian England, and this work, in four movements for wind and strings, will inspire listeners to search for more of his music.

From Cambridge, comes the exuberant anthem O be Joyful by William Boyce.  It was first performed at Great St Mary’s, the University Church, on 2 July 1749, the day after the Duke of Newcastle had been installed as Chancellor.  With its opening symphony, choruses, and solo, duet, and trio arias, the score has been specially edited for this first performance in North America.

These two works, alongside two pieces by Henry Purcell (Praise the Lord and Come, Ye Sons of Art), will be delivered by the combined forces of the Studio de Musique ancienne de Montréal and the Arion Baroque orchestra, under the direction of Andrew McAnerney (Magdalen 1995).

Friday 7th October 2022, 7:30pm
Saturday 8th October 2022, 4:00pm
Sunday 9th October 2022, 2:30pm
Tickets: 10% discount code OXBRIDGE

If you have ever wondered which university had the better music, come and confirm your suspicion!

The Salle Bourgie is at 1339 Rue Sherbrooke Ouest, Montréal, QC, H3G 1G2.

For more information, please visit Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal (SMAM) or Arion Baroque Orchestra.

Forty Years of Alumni Cricket

The Oxford-Cambridge Alumni Cricket Match’s 40th Anniversary

“Lordy, lordy!  Look who’s forty!”

We congratulate our colleagues in Toronto on the fortieth anniversary of the Oxford vs Cambridge Alumni Cricket Match.  They will hold the anniversary Match on Sunday 18 September 2022.

The very first Match was played in 1982, on the pitches of Lords Grounds at Upper Canada College.  It feels apt that the Match will return to its spiritual birthplace for this anniversary.

The celebrations will include the launch of a new “Michener-Bredin Trophy”, named to honour Terence Bredin and Roland Michener, two of the Match’s founders and most cherished characters.  The trophy has been generously funded by Match alumni and by the Oxford and Cambridge Society of Toronto.

Date: Sunday, 18 September 2022
Time: From 12h00 EDT
Place: Upper Canada College, 200 Lonsdale Rd, Toronto
RSVP: Martin Sykes, e-mail or telephone before 31 August

The Match welcomes spectators and players of all levels and ages.  There will be twenty-five overs per side, and players should wear cricket whites.  A traditional tea break will separate the innings, with food and refreshments provided.  The organisers are charging a modest $25 fee per person, to help defray event costs.

As part of the day’s festivities, Martin Sykes is compiling stories and photos from previous years’ Matches.  If you have any memories or material you would like to share with him, he would receive it enthusiastically.

If you know Oxford or Cambridge alumni who might like to be part of the Match, either as spectators or players, please do share this post with them.

Russia’s online disinformation campaign over Ukraine and how Canada is countering it

With Philippe-André Rodriguez, Deputy Director of the Centre for International Digital Policy

We were delighted to welcome Philippe-André Rodriguez (Exeter College), the Deputy Director of the Centre for International Digital Policy at Global Affairs Canada, at our April webinar.

He discussed his work trying to thwart the misuse of social media to spread disinformation and to undermine democracies, particularly in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Dr Rodriguez drew a capacity crowd, with five-hundred attendees from Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America gathering to hear his views and put questions to him.

His conversation with Oxonians addressed one of the most pressing global challenges of our time, and did so in a lively and engaging way.

Oxonian Leadership in North America

Ottawa, Mexico City, and Washington DC’s contribution to Oxford’s Meeting Minds Global 2021

Oxford University’s Meeting Minds Global 2021 hosted the fourth instalment of the Three Capitals series, an ongoing collaboration by the Oxford University Societies in Ottawa, Mexico City, and Washington DC.

Oxonians from every region of the globe joined us for a conversation with a distinguished panel of North American alumni, who spoke to the question, “What did your time at Oxford mean to your personal development as a leader, and how did it enable you to exercise leadership in North America?”

Our speakers were: Canada’s Astrid Guttmann, Chief Science Officer for the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences; Mexico’s Alejandro Ramírez, CEO of Cinépolis; and the United States’ Ebonique Boyd, Executive Director of NEXXXT.

Our moderators were: Ottawa’s Akaash Maharaj; Mexico City’s Karine Yuki; and Washington DC’s Sean Denniston.

The discussion was lively, insightful, and occasionally irreverent.

We are immensely grateful to our speakers, and to the Oxford University North American Office for inviting us to be part of Oxford’s premier global event.

Meeting Minds Global 2021

From Oxford to the Three Capitals: Oxonian Leadership in North America

The Three Capitals series between the Oxford University Societies in Ottawa, Mexico City, and Washington DC is coming to Meeting Minds Global 2021.

Meeting Minds Global is a week-long series of online sessions, created by the University’s alumni offices in Hong Kong, New York, Oxford, and Tokyo.  It enables Oxonians and friends of Oxford from across the world to come together, share ideas, and celebrate our shared bond.

The Three Capitals’ contribution will be to bring together three exceptional North American leaders, from three entirely different walks of life, to address the question, “What did your time at Oxford mean to your personal development as a leader, and how did it enable you to exercise leadership in North America?”

Date: Monday, 12 April 2021
Time: 17h30 Ottawa (16h30 Mexico City, 17h30 Washington DC)
Registration: At Meeting Minds Global

Our three speakers will be: from Canada, Astrid Guttmann, Chief Science Officer for the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences; from Mexico, Alejandro Ramírez, CEO of Cinépolis; and from the United States, Ebonique Boyd, Executive Director of NEXXXT.

The University is charging a modest £10 registration fee to participate in the full week of Meeting Mind Global activities, to help defray the costs of the event.

Climate Change and Global Finance

The third of the North American Three Capitals Webinars

The third instalment of our Three Capitals Webinars series was a conversation with Mark Carney, the UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance.

More than three-hundred Oxonians and friends of Oxford from around the world came together, to hear Mr Carney’s views and to question him on how the international financial architecture could work for climate action, rather than against it.

This webinar series is joint project of the Oxford University societies in Mexico City, Ottawa, and Washington DC. This event was moderated by our chapter.

Climate change is a notoriously incendiary subject, one at the conjunction of science and politics, where the burdens and benefits of action and inaction are bitterly contested. We are grateful for Mr Carney for offering his views to us, with warmth and thoughtfulness.

Webinar with Mark Carney

A Three Capitals webinar with the UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance

We are delighted to announce the third instalment of our Three Capitals Webinars series with the Oxford University Societies in Mexico City and Washington DC.

Mark Carney (St Peter’s and Nuffield) will speak to us on “The UN private finance agenda: how to ensure every financial system takes climate change into account”.

Mr Carney currently serves as the United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance.  Earlier in his career, he served as the Governor of the Bank of Canada, then Governor of the Bank of England.

Date: Thursday, 10 December 2020
Time: 10h00 Ottawa (09h00 Mexico City, 10h00 Washington DC)
Registration: At Zoom Webinars

Climate change is one of the defining challenges of our time.  Countries everywhere are struggling with competing pressures to address long-term existential climate risks on the one hand, and to meet immediate-term economic imperatives on the other.  Is it possible for markets to internalise the costs of climate change, so economic forces foster climate action?

As always, registration is free, but places are limited, and will be allocated first-come-first-served.

Canada’s 2020 Freshers

The OCST send-off for the cohort of new Canadian students at Oxford and Cambridge

The Oxford and Cambridge Society of Toronto invited our Vice President, Akaash Maharaj, to be part of their virtual send-off event for Canadian Freshers.  His remarks are below.

I was very flattered when the Oxford and Cambridge Society of Toronto invited me to speak to you, the 2020 cohort of Canadian Freshers.

Those feelings were only slightly blunted when the Society explained that they were hoping to offer you the perspective of a “seasoned graduate”, the implication being that I have been well and truly marinated by the years that have passed since I was myself a student at Oxford.

I can not deny that I am more seasoned than fresh.

I read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Teddy Hall.  PPE is, infamously, the degree most associated with people who think they should be running the world, but whose careers tend to prove that there is no limit to the human capacity for self-deception.

The foremost emotion I feel in being with you today is a sense of happy envy of the adventures you are all about to begin.

You will certainly be matriculating at an unusual moment in history.  But Oxford and Cambridge carried on through the Black Death of 1347 and the Great Plague of 1665.  The Pandemic of 2020 will be comparatively trivial, and will likely involve fewer people being burned at the stake.

For me, studying at Oxford completely changed the trajectory of my life.  It opened up new possibilities that I had previously only glimpsed as a distant observer.

Today, I serve as head of the Mosaic Institute, which advances pluralism in societies and peace amongst nations.  It operates through Track Two Diplomacy, and brings together people, communities, and states, to foster mutual understanding and to resolve conflicts.

In every mission I have ever undertaken, I have found myself tripping over other Oxonians: in desperate conflict zones and in the deep ease of diplomatic institutions; in razed villages and in glittering metropolises; on the barricades and in palaces.

Studying at Oxford helped all of us believe that the world could be a more humane and more just place.  It imparted to us a sense of responsibility to advance that dream.  And it gave us the most extraordinary opportunities to work towards making that dream a reality.

I have three observations to offer you, as you start your own journeys at Oxford and Cambridge.

The first is that you will be immersed in an ocean of riches.  The university buildings form part of the built heritage of the human race.  The tuition is intensely intimate.  The extracurricular activities are a marvel of diversity and depth.  And I am embarrassed by how quickly I took it all for granted.

You should savour the moments.  This density of opportunity will almost certainly never come your way again.

The second is that Britain can be a lonely place, especially if you are someone like me, who has had to work to overcome natural shyness.  The English, in particular, tend to be sceptical of easy friendliness, seeing it as glib and superficial.  They are often cutting, and sometimes cruel to one another.

But it is worth the effort to pierce their barriers, because the friendships you make with them will be all the deeper for it.

The third, is that you should do everything you can to maintain those friendships after university.  The true wealth of Oxford and Cambridge lie neither in their architecture nor indeed in their classes, but instead, in the fact that they draw together truly exceptional people, including yourselves.

I have forgotten almost everything I was taught at Oxford, but I remember almost everything I learned, because that came from the conversations, the experiences, and the dreams I nurtured with my peers.

The ties that will bind you together run deeper than the foundations of the modern world.  They have proven more enduring than the countless kingdoms, countries, and empires that have risen and fallen away during the nearly 1000 years since our universities first took root.

You will graduate into a world where societies everywhere are tearing themselves apart over questions of whom they recognise as friends and whom they reject as strangers.

In that context, the greatest gift Oxford gave to me is the knowledge that I am part of a fellowship that reaches across time and around the globe.  It includes people who speak different languages, profess different faiths, come from different ethnic groups, abide in different nations, and have been on opposite sides of history and warfare.

Yet, as Oxonians, we understand that there are no strangers amongst us: only friends we have yet to meet.

I genuinely envy the journey you are all about to begin.  I wish you well in adding to the stories of Oxford and Cambridge, and in adding Oxford and Cambridge to the stories of your lives.

Akaash Maharaj (St Edmund Hall) was the first overseas student elected President of the Oxford University Student Union.  He is Chief Executive Officer of the Mosaic Institute, which advances pluralism in societies and peace between nations. His personal web site is www.maharaj.org.

Human Mobility and COVID-19

The second of the North American Three Capitals Webinars

The second instalment of our Three Capitals Webinars series examined how physical mobility has affected the spread of coronavirus, and what public policy measures have succeeded and failed to contain the pandemic.

Our guest speaker, Dr Moritz Kraemer, joined us directly from Oxford. He is attached to both the University’s Department of Zoology and the Oxford Martin Programme on Pandemic Genomics.

This webinar series is joint project of the Oxford University societies in Mexico City, Ottawa, and Washington DC. This event was moderated by our colleagues in Mexico.

The struggle against coronavirus is one that involves the peoples of every country, and we were delighted to welcome audience members from across the world.

Oxford Climate Alumni Network

Launch of a new Oxonian network on climate change

The new Oxford Climate Alumni Network (OxCAN) will launch online, on 08 September 2020.  OxCAN is a collaborative initiative by the Oxford Climate Society, Oxford alumni, the Oxford Environmental Change Institute, and academics across University departments.

Date: Tuesday, 08 September 2020
Time: 12h00 EDT (16h00 UTC)
Registration: At Eventbrite

The new network will connect climate-concerned alumni to one another, to the latest research, and to students and initiatives working on climate at the University.

The network organisers have  also created a 10-minute consultation to hear directly from Oxonians about our climate-related interests and experiences.