Wednesday May 17, 2023 | VIEW ROYAL, BC [Updated June 30, 2023]
by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
See: Exclusive interview with Damian Kowalewich upon return from CSC [link to come]
The Duke of Edinburgh’s Commonwealth Study Conference plenary will be taking place June 3 to 5 in Banff, Alberta.
There will also be study tours heading out to British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan starting June 6.
11th conference:
Among the 300 delegates from 33 counties will be 59 Canadians, including View Royal Councillor Damian Kowalewich. Kowalewich also chairs the West Shore Parks and Recreation Society board which recently opened an open-community skatepark. In his day job he works as a Detective Sergeant with the Saanich Police.
Anne, The Princess Royal, will be visiting delegates in their study rooms on June 3.
Speakers will addresses global topics like health care, world food and nutrition, and community supports.
Among the CSC speakers will be Bob Rae who is Canada’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Canada to the United Nations in New York.
Also delivering remarks will be Dr. Alika Lafontaine, President, Canadian Medical Association, and Bea Bruske who is President of the Canadian Labour Congress.
Findings will be presented to the CSC committee on June 18 in Montreal.
Background:
The first Commonwealth Study Conference was held in the United Kingdom in 1956. It was, in the words of its founder, Prince Philip, HRH The Duke of Edinburgh, “an extraordinary experiment”.
It set out to provide an opportunity for high potential individuals from many different countries and all walks of life to leave behind their usual roles and, together, examine the relationship between industry and the community around it.
The Conference members were, at Prince Philip’s insistence, to be “people who appeared likely to be in the next generations of leaders so that when the time came for them to take important decisions they would have the benefit of what they had discovered on the Study Conference to help them”, it is stated in the history of the Commonwealth Study Conference.
Prince Philip passed away in 2021 at the age of 99.
===== RELATED:
Blast of a skatepark opening (May 14, 2023)
Three View Royal seasonal lights contest winners (Jan 6, 2023)
===== ABOUT ISLAND SOCIAL TRENDS:
Island Social Trends is professional regional journalism presented at islandsocialtrends.ca. Fully online as a daily news portal since mid-2020, Island Social Trends emerged from the path of previous print publications in the west shore: MapleLine Magazine (2008-2010), Sooke Voice News (2011-2013), and West Shore Voice News (2014-2020).
Since 2008, journalist and editor Mary P Brooke has taken a socioeconomic lens to reporting and analyzing the news of the west shore and south Vancouver Island region, including BC and national news impacts. [See Island Social Trends Politics Archive]. She has covered the details of local, provincial and federal elections since 2008. As of 2023 Mary P Brooke reports with the BC Legislative Press Gallery.
Mary P Brooke has also focused on news of School District 62 (Langford, Colwood and Sooke) at the board level since 2014 [see Island Social Trends Education archive] and has covered West Shore Parks & Recreation over the years (particularly the transitional years 2014-2020, and again starting 2023). During 2020 and 2021 she reported daily on BC’s COVID pandemic news to build the ongoing COVID pandemic archive. Since 2021 she has been building a Food Security news archive. She is now covering the 2023 Langford-Juan de Fuca by-election.
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