Our colleagues in Toronto will host the forty-first Oxford vs Cambridge Alumni Cricket Match on Sunday 17 September 2023.
Last year, Oxford took home the Mitchener-Bredin Trophy; this year, Cambridge will be hoping to even the tally. The Match will return to its traditional home on pitches of Lords Grounds at Upper Canada College.
The match will be a traditional red ball game, played in white clothing. The tea break between innings will include sandwiches, drinks, and cake, for both players and spectators alike.
Date: Sunday, 17 September 2023
Time: From 12h30 EDT
Place: Upper Canada College, 200 Lonsdale Rd, Toronto
RSVP: Martin Sykes, e-mail or telephone before 31 August
The Match welcomes players and spectators of all levels and ages. The organisers are charging a modest $30 fee per player to help defray event costs, and no fee for spectators.
If you know alumni who would like to be part of the Match, please do share this post with them.
“There is no room for fear: only faith, and light, and dreams of a better tomorrow.”
Our Secretary, Ali Arsalan Pasha, delivered a thoughtful and emotional TEDx Talk, about his journey from Turkey, to the United Kingdom, and now on to Canada.
He describes living through the 2016 attempted coup d’état in Turkey, waiting in fear for the next explosion, as government and insurrectionist forces battled in the streets.
He discusses his decision to give up the life he had built in Turkey, to seek safety in the United Kingdom.
He gives an account of overcoming fear to apply to Oxford, and afterwards, to emigrate to Canada at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
The common thread of his talk is the imperative to live a life without fear.
“There is no room for fear: only faith, and light, and dreams of a better tomorrow.”
TEDx Talks are local events, organised by independent groups, following the model of global TED Talks. Ali’s talk was hosted by TEDxHECMontreal.
OUS Ottawa welcomes the latest generation of Oxford alumni.
The University’s 2023 graduands and graduates gathered at Oxford Town Hall for this year’s Leavers’ Fair, as a springboard into life after studies.
OUS Ottawa was delighted to contribute a video to the event, on the benefits of remaining connected to the University community through the alumni group network.
OUS Ottawa is part of a global network of more than one hundred fifty Oxford Societies, spread across most of the countries of the world. Together, we enable Oxonians to sustain the friendships from our University days, across time and geography.
We are always eager to welcome Oxonians who live in or visit Canada’s National Capital Region, but we are especially keen to include the University’s newest alumni.
The Oxford-Cambridge Alumni Cricket Match’s 40th Anniversary
“Lordy, lordy! Look who’s forty!”
We congratulate our colleagues in Toronto on the fortieth anniversary of the Oxford vs Cambridge Alumni Cricket Match. They will hold the anniversary Match on Sunday 18 September 2022.
The very first Match was played in 1982, on the pitches of Lords Grounds at Upper Canada College. It feels apt that the Match will return to its spiritual birthplace for this anniversary.
The celebrations will include the launch of a new “Michener-Bredin Trophy”, named to honour Terence Bredin and Roland Michener, two of the Match’s founders and most cherished characters. The trophy has been generously funded by Match alumni and by the Oxford and Cambridge Society of Toronto.
Date: Sunday, 18 September 2022
Time: From 12h00 EDT
Place: Upper Canada College, 200 Lonsdale Rd, Toronto
RSVP: Martin Sykes, e-mail or telephone before 31 August
The Match welcomes spectators and players of all levels and ages. There will be twenty-five overs per side, and players should wear cricket whites. A traditional tea break will separate the innings, with food and refreshments provided. The organisers are charging a modest $25 fee per person, to help defray event costs.
As part of the day’s festivities, Martin Sykes is compiling stories and photos from previous years’ Matches. If you have any memories or material you would like to share with him, he would receive it enthusiastically.
If you know Oxford or Cambridge alumni who might like to be part of the Match, either as spectators or players, please do share this post with them.
With Philippe-André Rodriguez, Deputy Director of the Centre for International Digital Policy
We were delighted to welcome Philippe-André Rodriguez (Exeter College), the Deputy Director of the Centre for International Digital Policy at Global Affairs Canada, at our April webinar.
He discussed his work trying to thwart the misuse of social media to spread disinformation and to undermine democracies, particularly in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Dr Rodriguez drew a capacity crowd, with five-hundred attendees from Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America gathering to hear his views and put questions to him.
His conversation with Oxonians addressed one of the most pressing global challenges of our time, and did so in a lively and engaging way.
Ottawa, Mexico City, and Washington DC’s contribution to Oxford’s Meeting Minds Global 2021
Oxford University’s Meeting Minds Global 2021 hosted the fourth instalment of the Three Capitals series, an ongoing collaboration by the Oxford University Societies in Ottawa, Mexico City, and Washington DC.
Oxonians from every region of the globe joined us for a conversation with a distinguished panel of North American alumni, who spoke to the question, “What did your time at Oxford mean to your personal development as a leader, and how did it enable you to exercise leadership in North America?”
Our speakers were: Canada’s Astrid Guttmann, Chief Science Officer for the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences; Mexico’s Alejandro Ramírez, CEO of Cinépolis; and the United States’ Ebonique Boyd, Executive Director of NEXXXT.
The discussion was lively, insightful, and occasionally irreverent.
We are immensely grateful to our speakers, and to the Oxford University North American Office for inviting us to be part of Oxford’s premier global event.
From Oxford to the Three Capitals: Oxonian Leadership in North America
The Three Capitals series between the Oxford University Societies in Ottawa, Mexico City, and Washington DC is coming to Meeting Minds Global 2021.
Meeting Minds Global is a week-long series of online sessions, created by the University’s alumni offices in Hong Kong, New York, Oxford, and Tokyo. It enables Oxonians and friends of Oxford from across the world to come together, share ideas, and celebrate our shared bond.
The Three Capitals’ contribution will be to bring together three exceptional North American leaders, from three entirely different walks of life, to address the question, “What did your time at Oxford mean to your personal development as a leader, and how did it enable you to exercise leadership in North America?”
Date: Monday, 12 April 2021
Time: 17h30 Ottawa (16h30 Mexico City, 17h30 Washington DC)
Registration: At Meeting Minds Global
Our three speakers will be: from Canada, Astrid Guttmann, Chief Science Officer for the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences; from Mexico, Alejandro Ramírez, CEO of Cinépolis; and from the United States, Ebonique Boyd, Executive Director of NEXXXT.
The University is charging a modest £10 registration fee to participate in the full week of Meeting Mind Global activities, to help defray the costs of the event.
The third of the North American Three Capitals Webinars
The third instalment of our Three Capitals Webinars series was a conversation with Mark Carney, the UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance.
More than three-hundred Oxonians and friends of Oxford from around the world came together, to hear Mr Carney’s views and to question him on how the international financial architecture could work for climate action, rather than against it.
This webinar series is joint project of the Oxford University societies in Mexico City, Ottawa, and Washington DC. This event was moderated by our chapter.
Climate change is a notoriously incendiary subject, one at the conjunction of science and politics, where the burdens and benefits of action and inaction are bitterly contested. We are grateful for Mr Carney for offering his views to us, with warmth and thoughtfulness.
A Three Capitals webinar with the UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance
We are delighted to announce the third instalment of our Three Capitals Webinars series with the Oxford University Societies in Mexico City and Washington DC.
Mark Carney (St Peter’s and Nuffield) will speak to us on “The UN private finance agenda: how to ensure every financial system takes climate change into account”.
Mr Carney currently serves as the United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance. Earlier in his career, he served as the Governor of the Bank of Canada, then Governor of the Bank of England.
Date: Thursday, 10 December 2020
Time: 10h00 Ottawa (09h00 Mexico City, 10h00 Washington DC)
Registration: At Zoom Webinars
Climate change is one of the defining challenges of our time. Countries everywhere are struggling with competing pressures to address long-term existential climate risks on the one hand, and to meet immediate-term economic imperatives on the other. Is it possible for markets to internalise the costs of climate change, so economic forces foster climate action?
As always, registration is free, but places are limited, and will be allocated first-come-first-served.
I was very flattered when the Oxford and Cambridge Society of Toronto invited me to speak to you, the 2020 cohort of Canadian Freshers.
Those feelings were only slightly blunted when the Society explained that they were hoping to offer you the perspective of a “seasoned graduate”, the implication being that I have been well and truly marinated by the years that have passed since I was myself a student at Oxford.
I can not deny that I am more seasoned than fresh.
I read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Teddy Hall. PPE is, infamously, the degree most associated with people who think they should be running the world, but whose careers tend to prove that there is no limit to the human capacity for self-deception.
The foremost emotion I feel in being with you today is a sense of happy envy of the adventures you are all about to begin.
You will certainly be matriculating at an unusual moment in history. But Oxford and Cambridge carried on through the Black Death of 1347 and the Great Plague of 1665. The Pandemic of 2020 will be comparatively trivial, and will likely involve fewer people being burned at the stake.
For me, studying at Oxford completely changed the trajectory of my life. It opened up new possibilities that I had previously only glimpsed as a distant observer.
Today, I serve as head of the Mosaic Institute, which advances pluralism in societies and peace amongst nations. It operates through Track Two Diplomacy, and brings together people, communities, and states, to foster mutual understanding and to resolve conflicts.
In every mission I have ever undertaken, I have found myself tripping over other Oxonians: in desperate conflict zones and in the deep ease of diplomatic institutions; in razed villages and in glittering metropolises; on the barricades and in palaces.
Studying at Oxford helped all of us believe that the world could be a more humane and more just place. It imparted to us a sense of responsibility to advance that dream. And it gave us the most extraordinary opportunities to work towards making that dream a reality.
I have three observations to offer you, as you start your own journeys at Oxford and Cambridge.
The first is that you will be immersed in an ocean of riches. The university buildings form part of the built heritage of the human race. The tuition is intensely intimate. The extracurricular activities are a marvel of diversity and depth. And I am embarrassed by how quickly I took it all for granted.
You should savour the moments. This density of opportunity will almost certainly never come your way again.
The second is that Britain can be a lonely place, especially if you are someone like me, who has had to work to overcome natural shyness. The English, in particular, tend to be sceptical of easy friendliness, seeing it as glib and superficial. They are often cutting, and sometimes cruel to one another.
But it is worth the effort to pierce their barriers, because the friendships you make with them will be all the deeper for it.
The third, is that you should do everything you can to maintain those friendships after university. The true wealth of Oxford and Cambridge lie neither in their architecture nor indeed in their classes, but instead, in the fact that they draw together truly exceptional people, including yourselves.
I have forgotten almost everything I was taught at Oxford, but I remember almost everything I learned, because that came from the conversations, the experiences, and the dreams I nurtured with my peers.
The ties that will bind you together run deeper than the foundations of the modern world. They have proven more enduring than the countless kingdoms, countries, and empires that have risen and fallen away during the nearly 1000 years since our universities first took root.
You will graduate into a world where societies everywhere are tearing themselves apart over questions of whom they recognise as friends and whom they reject as strangers.
In that context, the greatest gift Oxford gave to me is the knowledge that I am part of a fellowship that reaches across time and around the globe. It includes people who speak different languages, profess different faiths, come from different ethnic groups, abide in different nations, and have been on opposite sides of history and warfare.
Yet, as Oxonians, we understand that there are no strangers amongst us: only friends we have yet to meet.
I genuinely envy the journey you are all about to begin. I wish you well in adding to the stories of Oxford and Cambridge, and in adding Oxford and Cambridge to the stories of your lives.
Akaash Maharaj (St Edmund Hall) was the first overseas student elected President of the Oxford University Student Union. He is Chief Executive Officer of the Mosaic Institute, which advances pluralism in societies and peace between nations. His personal web site is www.maharaj.org.
Oxford University Society in Ottawa 