Andreas Onnerfors at Ontario's Brock University

(I'm on the road this week in upstate New York, so my internet connections are dependent on rest area wi-fi spots. This is my first test of the email update feature of Blogger.)

Andreas Önnerfors, the former Director of the recently closed Centre for Research into Freemasonry at Britain's Sheffield University, will give the first annual Charles A. Sankey Lecture in Masonic Studies at Canada's Brock University on April 17th. Brock University is located in St Catharines, Ontario. The lecture series is named after Sankey who was a Freemason and a former chancellor of Brock University.

Brother Andreas has published about forty papers and articles in various languages, a majority of them on Freemasonry.

The event begins at 3 p.m. in the University's David S. Howes Theatre. The lecture is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. To make reservations contact the Brock Centre for the Arts box office at 905-688-5550, ext. 3257 or email boxoffice@brocku.ca

From The Brock News :

The series is named for the late Charles Sankey, a former Chancellor at Brock University and a Mason who donated his extensive personal collection of Masonic literature to the Gibson Library at Brock. Subsequently a number of other Freemasons added more titles to the collection, creating what is today one of the largest archives of Masonic material at a Canadian university.

Raymond Daniels, Ontario Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Canada, hopes the lecture series will be the first of three steps that culminate in the permanent study of Freemasonry. The second stage would be a world conference bringing a number of Masonic scholars together at Brock. But the ultimate goal is the creation of The Sankey Centre for Masonic Studies, with a Chair in Masonic Studies. Daniels says establishing a Chair is a long-term project that will require an endowment of about $4-million, which he hopes the Masons themselves will be able to raise.

Daniels said the Centre would study fraternalism in sociological terms. It would also examine the contribution of Freemasonry to Canadian society over the last 300 years, as “people are not aware of the impact Freemasonry has had on the development of western civilization in this part of the world.”

He said fraternalism has been in decline, and its historic role would be in danger of being overlooked without formal study of its contributions.