{"id":15316,"date":"2016-09-21T22:02:31","date_gmt":"2016-09-22T02:02:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=15316"},"modified":"2016-09-23T12:17:02","modified_gmt":"2016-09-23T16:17:02","slug":"one-book-one-aurora-sparks-human-rights-discussion-next-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/one-book-one-aurora-sparks-human-rights-discussion-next-week\/","title":{"rendered":"One Book One Aurora sparks human rights discussion next week"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

The face of Aurora is changing with exceptional growth in the northeast, but how can Aurora keep from becoming a \u201csplintered town\u201d?
\nThat is the question that has been on the minds of a number of community leaders this month as they prepare to tackle that issue, and many others, head-on in \u201cThe Changing Face of Canada,\u201d an open forum on the richness of and challenges facing our community.
\nHosted by the Aurora Public Library as part of their One Book One Aurora campaign, the panel, which takes place at the Library Thursday, September 29, from 7 \u2013 9 p.m., features Mbalu Lumor, Manager of Community Engagement for the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture, Art Rekhtin, Manager of Newcomer Services at Welcome Centre Newmarket, York Regional Police Constable Ali Lalani of the department\u2019s Diversity & Cultural Resources Unit, and former MP Costas Menegakis, who served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.
\nOne Book One Aurora is the Aurora Public Library\u2019s campaign to get as many people as possible reading from the same book. This year\u2019s selection is Under the Visible Life by Kim Echlin.
\nThe music-fuelled novel touches, for better or worse, many aspects of the what it means to be a newcomer and the forces that drive people to make life-altering decisions, including pressures of intermarriage in interwar Canada and in Afghanistan.
\n\u201cWe all know Aurora is changing,\u201d says Reccia Mandelcorn of the Aurora Public Library. \u201cWe know our population is changing. We want to be able to reach out to the richness of newcomers in our community and we want to be able to learn about their challenges, we want to be able to learn about what they can help us with, and we really want to make living in Aurora and living in Canada a very positive experience.\u201d
\nOver the last few years, Ms. Mandelcorn say she has had the opportunity to touch upon this very issue at several community discussion groups where a number of similar themes were raised, including making sure everybody is a part of the diversity in the community, challenges facing newcomers entering the job market, and addressing any inkling of \u201csubtle racism.\u201d
\n\u201cSo many newcomers are moving into the Northeast Quadrant, how do we bring them in without becoming a splintered town?\u201d she ponders, noting this too is a common theme. \u201cBecause of some of those conversations I have had with various different community members, and because in Under the Visible Life [addresses the] whole theme of immigration and racism because of the experiences the two main protagonists, we thought this would be a really great opportunity to have a panel discussion on the changing face of Canada and trying to address this from both a local Aurora aspect and also from [all levels].
\n\u201cWe got together a really high level panel for those who are involved in this from different ways.\u201d
\nNext Thursday\u2019s discussion will be moderated by former councillor Alison Collins-Mrakas, Senior Policy Advisor on Research Ethics at York University (and also a columnist in The Auroran). Ms. Mandelcorn says in preliminary discussions with Ms. Collins-Mrakas, she knows she will be able to \u201cgenerate fair, open and interesting discussion\u201d on such an important topic.
\n\u201cThe excitement is always in everybody talking about something so important with each other,\u201d says Ms. Mandelcorn. \u201cWe all have something important to say about our country, our freedom, and other cultures, and wanting to build a really positive, rich community and society. Let\u2019s use the threads [in the book] as an opportunity to spark a conversation.\u201d
\nFor more information, visit www.onebookoneaurora.com. <\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The face of Aurora is changing with exceptional growth in the northeast, but how can Aurora keep from becoming a \u201csplintered town\u201d?
\nThat is the question that has been on the minds of a number of community leaders this month as they prepare to tackle that issue, and many others, head-on in \u201cThe Changing Face of Canada,\u201d an open forum on the richness of and challenges facing our community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15283,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/2016-09-22-02.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-3Z2","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-15 10:22:42","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}