ASTRONOMY: Canada's Stonehenge in 3200 BC,

and Gregory's Bologna in AD 1575

Guest speaker: Gordon Freeman

When:    Saturday, June 25, 2016, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.

Where:   Herb-Linder Annex (BowlingGreen)
              303 Beaconsfield Blvd, Beaconsfield, H9W 4A7

Lecture in English followed by a bilingual question period.

Mr Freeman and his wife discovered the Sun Temple near Majorville in southern Alberta on 21 August 1980. Since then they have lived on the site for many days in Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring, in all months except February. A total of about 250 days.
The Temple contains accurate solar and lunar calendars, marked with long lines of stones or cairns that point exactly to rise and set points of the Sun and Full Moon at calendrical hinge dates: the Summer and Winter Solstices, and the Spring and Fall Equalday/nights. (In Old English, henge means hinge, hence the name Stonehenge.)
The most exciting discovery was that the dates when the day and night are each exactly 12.0 hours long, the Equalday/night, are NOT the dates of the so-called Equinoxes in our calendar, the Gregorian Calendar.
Mr Freeman will show how the solar calendar worked on the Great Plains in 3200 BC, and in Gregory’s Bologna in AD 1575. And tell why Pope Gregory XIII deceptively gave a wrong dates to the Equinoxes (Equalnights) in AD 1582.
New discoveries are still popping up as he analyzes the 13,000 photographs of the site.

 The Sun rose at a time and place that changed our history.

Rocks that speak without sound and know without words.                              

Gordon Freeman was born in 1930 in Hoffer, Saskatchewan, and was introduced to Stone Age artefacts at the age of six. His father collected stone projectile points and stone tools from the Saskatchewan prairie after dry winds had blown away tilled soil.
He obtained an M.A. from the University of Saskatchewan, a Ph.D. from McGill, and a D.Phil. from Oxford. He is a Chemical Physicist, was for ten years Chairman of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Alberta, and for thirty years Director of the Radiation Research Centre there. He is now a Professor Emeritus. For fifty years he has pioneered interdisciplinary studies in chemistry, physics, archaeoastronomy, and human societies. He has more than 450 publications in chemistry, physics, archaeoastronomy, and other subjects.
As a hobby he visited many archaeological sites in Canada, the United States, Britain, Ireland, Europe, and Asia. In 1980 he and his wife Phyllis discovered a 5200-year-old Sun Temple in southern Alberta, and have studied it ever since. In 1989 they took observation techniques they had developed in Alberta to England, to resolve the controversy that surrounded a possible calendar in Stonehenge. The astonishingly beautiful, nearly the same, ancient calendars in southern Alberta and Stonehenge have far ranging implications for international prehistory and history.

Relevant book by this author:  HIDDEN STONEHENGE: Ancient Temple in North America Reveals the Key to Ancient Wonders, London, Watkins Publishing, 2012

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Migration, Genetics, and Social Stratification in Human Prehistory

Guest Speaker: Alex Kim

When:   Thursday, May 19, 2016, from 19:30 to 21:00

Where:  Centennial Hall

             288 Beaconsfield Blvd, Beaconsfield, H9W 4A4

Video Lecture in English.

Alex Kim will give insights into human prehistory from genome-wide ancient DNA data and the emerging dialogue of genetics, archaeology, and historical linguistics. Focus geographically will likely be on North America.

Alexander M. Kim
B.A. Harvard 2013 (Organismic & Evolutionary Biology; Uyghur language).
Research associate 2013-15, David Reich Ancient DNA

Laboratory, Dept. of Genetics, Harva

rd Medical School:

- exploring human population hist

ory using ancient and modern genetic data.
Ph.D. candidate 2015- in Archaeology, Dept. of Anthropology, Graduate School of Arts & Science, Harvard University:

- investigating questions of migration, admixture, and social stratification in the human past,
especially in high-latitude Eurasia & North America, but also in Central Asia & the broader Pacific world.
- hoping to synthesize genetic and other lines of inquiry (e.g., classical archaeology, historical linguistics)
for a more complete perspective on human prehistory.

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Rock Art of the Eastern Canadian Shield

Guest Speaker: Daniel Arsenault

When:   Thursday, April 21, 2016, from 19:30 to 21:00

Where:  Centennial Hall

             288 Beaconsfield Blvd, Beaconsfield H9W 4A4

Lecture in English followed by a bilingual question period.

Doctor in anthropology with specialization in pre-Columbian archaeology at Université de Montréal, Daniel Arsenault has spent the last dozen of years doing researches on aboriginal rock art sites of the Canadian Shield and Eastern Arctic, for

content analysis as well as conservation and enhanced

presentation. The study of rock art lead him to research

studies of sites in Québec and Canada, A

ustralia, Italy, United-States, Antilles and Brazil. He presently leads an international workgroup which mandate is the production of an innovating document on documentation of rock art sites around the world.

The Triple Lines of Evidence for Prehistoric Migrations:

Genetic, Archaeological, and Linguistic

Guest speaker: Roy Keys

When:    Thursday, March 17, 2016, from 19:30 to 21:00

Where:   Centennial Hall
              288 Beaconsfield Blvd, Beaconsfield, H9W 4A4

Lecture in English followed by a bilingual question period.

In the past decade and a half, the relatively new science of genetics has shed new light on the peopling of the world. Recent results confirm the archeological evidence for 2 major waves of migrations into Europe after the last ice age, and enable a reconstruction of the genetic history of the populations of modern Europe.

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The Last of the Beothuks : Shawnadithit or Santu?"

Guest speaker: Roy Wright

When:    Thursday, February 18, 2016, from 19:30 to 21:00

Where:   Centennial Hall
              288 Beaconsfield Blvd, Beaconsfield, H9W 4A4

Lecture in English followed by a bilingual question period.

While most Canadians with historical curiosity or feeling will have heard of Shawnadithit and her poignant fate, very few will know the name of Santu, whose story was published in 1922 by University of Pennsylvania Prof. Frank G. Speck. He wrote the short monograph BEOTHUK AND MICMAC after meeting Santu, the last Beothuk still living a century ago among the Micmac of Conn River, Newfoundland.

This remarkable encounter was the result of Speck's perseverance and the mutual trust developed between this maverick ethnologist and the indigenous people, mostly Algonquian, that he worked with in eastern North America, from the Catawba of South Carolina to the Lenni-Lenape, Abenaki-Penobscot, Passamaquoddy-Maliseet, Micmac, and Naskapi-Cree of the Northeast as far as Labrador.

We will focus on this little-known part of the history of Newfoundland, tracing the earliest origins of these "Red (-Paint) Indians" to the earliest human hunters south of the last glaciation on the Canadian Shield.

Santu Toney.                                                  Shanawdithit                                                    The son of Santu Toney and his family.

 Photo Frank Speck 1910.                                                                                                                                                    Photo Frank Speck.
Courtesy of American Philosophical Society (4595a)                                                                                                           Courtesy of American Philosophical Society (4595a)

A request has been made for anyone with musical talent to record an MP3 version of Santu's Song!

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The Long Sault on the Ottawa River: From Prehistory to Dollard des Ormeaux

Guest speaker: Robert Simard, Historian and Storyteller

When:    Thursday, January 21, 2016, from 19:30 to 21:00
Where:   Centennial Hall
              288 Beaconsfield Blvd, Beaconsfield, H9W 4A4

Lecture in English followed by a bilingual question period.

Historian at the Musée régional d’Argenteuil in Carillon, Robert Simard is a great storyteller. His presentation balances delicately between history and fantasy. There is a point for Mr. Simard when history develops into a full-fledged pageant, thereby transporting us to the frontier where dreams and memory meet and marry.
The lecture will focus on the prehistory of the Ottawa River, the movements of First Nations people around the Long Sault and the famous battle of 1660.

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Starting in 2016 and throughout the year 2016, the Beaurepaire-Beaconsfield Historical Society invites you to discover different aspects of Early Canadian History before European immigration

Everyone welcome. 

Free for members; $2 for non-members
Become a member for $5 per year 

Information: Contact us

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Afghanistan, beyond the news headline, as seen by a witness

Guest speaker: Major Richard Gratton

When:    Thursday, November 19, 2015, from 19:00 to 20:45

Where:   Beaconsfield Library

               303 Beaconsfield Blvd, Beaconsfield, H9W 4A7

Lecture in English followed by a bilingual question period.

From December 2010 to July 2011, Major Richard Gratton, a citizen of Beaconsfield, was deployed to Afghanistan with the 1^st Battalion Royal 22^e Régiment.
Major Gratton proposes to take you beyond the news headline with his presentation, videos and pictures. A conflict, still in the headlines in this month of November, remembrance month.

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