The Institute has initiated a program of community education. The aim is to develop both scholarly resources that support theoretical and empirical work related to the building and renewal of civil society, and tools for education in public and oral history.
The current publications program is focussed on a set of reading lists, a book review program, and a series of working papers.
In terms of public history, we have begun work on a set of weekly historical notes.
Andrew Downs (1811-1892) created the first Zoological Gardens in North America in Dutch Village in 1847, at the head of the Northwest Arm, expanding it eventually to over 40 hectares (100 acres) in size. He was humble and gentle, a practicing naturalist, who saw Nature as the greatest Temple and set out to share it with the public at large, not as dead, sterile taxidermied mounts, but as a living menagerie, to be experienced by all.
