Bio Archives - Third Age Barrie

Osnat Lippa

Osnat was born in Israel but lived most of her adult life outside of Israel, in England and North America. She is a practicing digital artist and photographer and has been working as one for the last thirty years.

She graduated from London Guildhall University (now London Metropolitan University) in London England with a diploma in Art and Design and continued her studies later on to acquire a Postgraduate diploma in Digital Imaging and Animation.

Since moving to Toronto fifteen years ago she has a been teaching art history courses around various educational facilities in Toronto including the Life Institute which is part of Ryerson University Chang School of Continuing Education for the fifty plus, the Prosserman JCC, U of T continuing Education, and other smaller venues. She has been covering many periods, topics and artists. Her enthusiasm and passion for art has made her courses fun, engaging and informative.

Iain Scott

Iain Scott is one of Canada’s best-known and most popular opera educators and tour leaders.

For 25 years, he was a regular and frequent guest on CBC radio’s “Saturday Afternoon at the Opera”

… and for 8 seasons was a guest panelist on the “Texaco Opera Quiz” from the Metropolitan in New York.

He now regularly teaches courses at the University of Toronto, York University, Ryerson University, George Brown College, Jewish Community Centres, etc. … and increasingly in private homes.

He is in constant demand as a lecturer for guilds, societies and opera companies across North America, including …

the Smithsonian Institution
the Chautauqua Institution
Opera America and
almost every Wagner Society in the US and Canada.

Each Spring and Fall, he organizes a variety of Opera tours to European and North American opera houses. Detailed itineraries for his tours are on his website www.opera-is.com (the “I.S.” is for “Iain Scott”)

Brian Carlile

Brian Carlile, born and brought up in the UK, has a broad background in the world of professional music.

As a player in major symphony and chamber orchestras and as a session musician, conductor, contractor and organiser, his working life has taken him across continents and through society.

As a music writer and arranger, he has experienced the creative process from the ground up. As a speaker he gets to explore and share his perspectives and insights with interested audiences.

Arkady Spivak

Arkady Spivak attended York University, Glendon College until 2000, working on a BA in Theatre and Business.

In 2003 Arkady founded Talk Is Free Theatre. Since then the company has produced 96 productions in Barrie and toured nationally and internationally. Talk Is Free Theatre won a prestigious Dora Award for its co-production of Assassins, which was also seen in Toronto and at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre in Winnipeg.

In the fall of 2018, Spivak produced the largest theatre experience in the world, entitled The Curious Voyage. It was the 3-day long journey, in which each patron became the protagonist of their own story, and was transported, quite literally, between Barrie and London, UK. This spring Spivak has created and is producing WOW, a multi-disciplinary collection of immersive art, making it the first festival of its kind anywhere in the world.

Katherine Barber

“Canada’s Word Lady”, bestselling and award-winning author and founding editor of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary Katherine Barber is an authority on English usage, particularly in Canada. She is known to legions of fans for her knack for making the history of the English language lively and entertaining. She offers word histories and usage commentaries on her “Wordlady” blog, www.katherinebarber.blogspot.com

Marta O’Brien

Marta O’Brien has been an architectural historian for 25 years. She earned her architecture degree with honours from Ryerson University, and Masters degree in environmental studies from York University. Marta develops and teaches many architectural history courses for the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. Through her own company, Citywalks (www.citywalks.ca), Marta presents tours and illustrated lectures for historical societies, seniors’ learning organizations, libraries, and others.

Tom Gerry

Joni Mitchell’s Music and Painting

In this presentation Tom Gerry will introduce the Third Age Barrie audience to some details of Joni Mitchell’s career as a painter and musician. The over-all direction of the talk is to demonstrate that Mitchell’s celebrity status is only a small part of her life story, a part that she largely rejects, in fact. Rather, she sees herself—and she is—consciously and seriously, an artist: a painter, poet, singer, guitarist and pianist. Her song lyric, “Life is our cause,” succinctly expresses her approach to her art.

To explain how Mitchell is a serious artist, I will give examples of her work and show ways in which she uses metaphors to create narratives of her major concerns. For clarity, in this talk I will address these themes under the headings of Journey, Love, and Nature. As the audience will see, throughout Mitchell’s work, the themes are closely linked, not by Mitchell’s personality, but by her art.

Now retired after thirty years at Laurentian University, Tom Gerry lives in Barrie, and is a member of the The Third Age Board of Directors. He is Professor Emeritus of English Literature, particularly Canadian Literature in English. He is the author of Contemporary Canadian and US Women of Letters and The Emblems of James Reaney, as well as more than twenty academic papers and numerous book reviews. He writes regularly for Queen’s Quarterly, including an article on Joni Mitchell’s work.

Brian Irving

For over 17 years, Brian Irving has been a therapist, specializing in the field of addictions and associated behaviours. He has extensive clinical experience, providing compassionate, client centred care to those within the youth criminal justice system, community-based addiction treatment agencies as well as in both inpatient and outpatient based addiction recovery programs. He currently maintains certifications as a Registered Psychotherapist, Certified Addictions Counsellor, Certified Child and Youth Counsellor, Registered Trainer and Treatment Provider for the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association (NADA) and is a Registered Clinical Supervisor. Brian is currently employed at Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre as the manager of Addiction Services and the Rapid Access Addiction Medicine Clinics.

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