Conference 365 is a new joint initiative between the Association for Opera in Canada and Orchestras Canada, following the success of the O₂ Conference in Edmonton and designed to sustain the conversations, learning, and connections sparked during the conference.
As a year-round, virtual series (no travel required!) Conference 365 offers ongoing opportunities for artists, administrators, and sector leaders to connect, reflect, and grow together across the performing arts sector.
SESSIONS
Conference 365 | Dear Lara: online screening and Q&A with Lara St. John
Monday, 23 November 2026 | 1:00 to 3:00 pm ET | Online (Zoom Webinar) | Free
English audio with French subtitles
When violinist Lara St. John spoke publicly about the abuse she experienced as a child at an elite music school, she uncovered a pattern that reached far beyond her own story. Her documentary Dear Lara follows her and fellow survivors as they confront a culture of silence in classical music.
Orchestras Canada, the Association for Opera in Canada and the Organization of Canadian Symphony Musicians invite you to watch it together, followed by a Q&A with Lara St. John.
Content note: the film deals with childhood sexual abuse. Attendees are not visible to one another, a support person will be available by private message throughout, and a list of resources will be shared with all registrants.
This screening is presented in partnership with the Organization of Canadian Symphony Musicians.
REGISTER
PAST SESSIONS
Amuksism. You Really Have to Listen., is a powerful documentary exploring the appropriation of Indigenous music, law, and ceremony into Western classical music traditions.
In 2017, the COC remounted “Louis Riel” by Harry Somers and Mavor Moore, one of Canada’s few grand operas. Embedded in the opera composition was an appropriated Nisga’a Limx ooy song belonging to the House of Sgat’iin re-purposed and deconstructed as an aria raising serious cultural concerns.
Decades before the opera was written, the song had been collected by ethnographer Marius Barbeau and transcribed by Ernest MacMillan during a 1920s west coast expedition conducted under the Potlatch Ban.
During rehearsals, Dr. Dylan Robinson (Stó:lō/Skwah) and Nisga’a Nation representatives Keane Tait and Michael Dangeli approached the COC to raise concerns about the use as an infraction of Nisga’a Lisims protocol and law. The documentary brings together Indigenous composers, musicians, artists and scholars alongside COC and CMC representatives to examine what is at stake when settler artists misappropriate Indigenous song and ceremony, and what paths toward reparation and redress might look like.