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BC Civil Liberties Association - 2012-2013 - 50th Anniversary Celebration – FestschriftThe British Columbia Civil Liberties Association will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2012.
As part of that, we want to put together a festschrift – a collection of letters, essays, articles, poems, and other short works that will focus on civil liberties and human rights and freedoms in Canada and elsewhere in the world. The title is simple, but apt – “A Celebration of Civil Liberties in Canada and the World”. As President of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, I wanted to bring this project to your attention and ask for your help and involvement. We would very much like to extend a personal invitation to you to provide a written contribution to this work.
Posting a notice of this for all others – academics, students, professionals, business persons, workers, retired persons – in short, anyone who wishes to participate - would be a great assistance in that. Materials submitted will be published online with the BCCLA website and be accessible for everyone to read, think about, discuss and enjoy. A selection of the materials that are submitted will be published in a book form, with arrangements for that to be worked out in due course. We wish to consider, once we see the overall response to this, whether there is sufficient interest to launch an ongoing online journal for the publication of academic articles concerning civil liberties, human rights and democratic governance.
Other facets of civil liberties, human rights and freedoms may interest you and other contributors to this work and are welcome. No doubt readers will find thought-provoking, challenging, uplifting and reinforcing passages in many of the works submitted. At the very least, they will find reassurance and confirmation in knowing that so many others subscribe to the same commitment to rights and freedoms that they do. We have already received confirmation that several people will write something for this work. From Canada’s legal community, we are pleased that Chief Justice McLachlin has agreed to do so, and we look forward to contributions from other jurists, legal scholars, government leaders and legal counsel. From Canada’s academic community, we are pleased that Dr. John Dixon, one of our former Presidents and a well-recognized Canadian philosopher has agreed to write something. So have the deans of all of the law schools in British Columbia and at the University of Alberta. We have received expressions of interest in contributing to this project from others, including former Prime Minister Kim Campbell, former Attorney General of B.C. Andrew Petter, former federal cabinet minister Stephen Owen, former B.C. Supreme Court justice Tom Berger, writer and philosopher John Ralston Saul, and we look forward to contributions from many others as well. From our literary and artistic community, we are looking for contributions which may well include short stories, poems, essays and other works. If this sounds like a major work, we agree. The happy thing is that it ought not be unduly burdensome on any one person – as indicated, each work is expected to be 10 to 50 pages in length, although shorter or longer contributions are welcome and would fit in as well. We want to ensure that our 50th anniversary is one that affords due recognition to the work and accomplishment that the BCCLA has made. And what better way for an organization committed to education about and the promotion of civil liberties and human rights and freedoms could there be than something that carried on the discussion and debate about what we have done, where we have come from and what possibilities exist for what we might, both individually and collectively, be able to do for the future as a society? We look forward to an affirmative response from you at your early convenience. We have established a soft target of December 2011 and a harder deadline of March 31, 2012 for contributions to this project. That should afford ample time for everyone and still allow for the work of assembling, organizing, editing and publishing to be accomplished all in good time. Thank you for your attention to this. A short form version that I am encouraging others to post as a Call for Papers is thus: Call for Papers by the BC Civil Liberties Association -- 2012-2013 - 50th Anniversary Celebration – Festschrift The BCCLA’s 50th anniversary celebrations in 2012-2013 will include a festschrift – a collection of letters, essays, articles, poems, and other works - that will focus on civil liberties and human rights and freedoms in Canada and elsewhere in the world. Papers will be published online and collections by topic may be published in book form thereafter. Topics may include:
Suggested length is 10-50 pages, although longer and shorter works will be received. Please provide notice of your interest in contributing to this project to Robert Holmes, BCCLA President, at holmes@bccla.org. Papers should be submitted by December 31, 2011 if practicable, with a hard deadline of March 31, 2012. | |||