by Mark Cwik, leader of our 2020 Toronto Pursuits seminar The Great (R)evolution: Darwin’s On the Origin of Species Upon first reading Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, the great 19th-century biologist Thomas Henry Huxley—later to be known as “Darwin’s Bulldog”—is reported to have told friends, “How extremely stupid […]
A guest blog post by Mark Cwik I’ve been reading quite a bit in the last few months about the frontier and the American West, and I’m struck by how deep, pervasive and suggestive the idea of the West is for us in North America. It is almost impossible to […]
By Ann Sofia As an Osher Lifelong Learning Institute/Great Books participant, I joined the Worldwide Quest tour group affiliated with Classical Pursuits of Toronto for a late-summer visit to Iceland. This small island nation is home to some of the toughest, most self-reliant Norse descendants who are also among the […]
Mark and Ann just finished final decision-making for the reading for our Classical Pursuits trip to Colombia. Read about the process of book selection for the trip by leader Mark Cwik: Book selection for a Classical Pursuits trip begins at the same time as the idea for the trip itself. […]
I think we read and we travel for many of the same reasons. We like to visit new places and experience new things. Books are a kind of travel by imagination. Although I’ve travelled a fair bit, and I’ve read quite a lot, I’d never combined the two until I […]
Day 8 (September 6): The Saga Circle Another amazing day, and the last of our bus adventures outside Reykjavik. This time we travelled along the southwestern coast heading north. We drove through a 3-mile long tunnel in bedrock beneath the water to cross the Hvalfjord on our way to the Borgafjord […]
Day 5 (September 3): Smaratun and Saga Museum The view from my farm window this morning was giant white turkeys. The male could have been my height, but his plumage would have made him too wide to go through that little church door at Thingvellir! We had a late and […]
In this three-part post, the intrepid Bobbi (aka Borghilde) Speck gives us all the news that’s fit to print on Literary Iceland: Isle of Awe, 2014. Led by Mark Cwik and Ann Kirkland, a group of travellers read, ate, and hiked their way through this astonishing country. Did they encounter any […]
[wowslider id=”101″] These were taken with my phone. Better pics are bound to come from those with serious cameras and better eyes. Music is Icelandic, a free download. Iceland in words can be found here, ON THE ROAD WITH ANN — Iceland, an unlikely nation and here, GUEST BLOG – Bobbi Speck on incredible […]
A couple of years ago, a friend in Bogota told me a joke that he says Colombians tell on themselves. It runs something like this: “When God was creating the world, He was especially generous when it came to Colombia. He gave it the lush Amazon, the spectacular Andes, the […]