The cancelled meeting
The Association’s 2020 annual meeting was planned for 3–5 June at Western University in London, Ontario. The Association explicitly records that it was cancelled because of COVID-19. A planned meeting is not an event that took place.
Bridging Divides
The theme was Bridging Divides: Confronting Colonialism and Anti-Black Racism. The source connects multidisciplinary enquiry to dispossession of Indigenous peoples, enslavement of Africans, white privilege and social, political and epistemological divisions. Its account locates Western on the lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak and Attawandaron nations.
A lost joint conversation
The Association also recorded the lost opportunity to meet jointly with the Canadian Association of Law Teachers on 3 June. That statement describes the intended overlap, rather than confirming that a joint session occurred.
Research worksheet
Choose one question arising from the theme. Identify the institutions, communities or relationships being studied; distinguish the historical process from a present legal rule; record the evidence and the standpoint of the source. For example, a project about dispossession should specify the place, period and legal instrument, rather than treating colonialism as a single undifferentiated experience.
Reading an event record
Record the planned dates, the stated cancellation and the theme separately. Search for subsequent publications by a researcher before attributing a finding to this cancelled meeting.
- 01Planned: 3–5 June 2020
- 02Cancelled: COVID-19
- 03Theme: Bridging Divides
- 04Follow-up: publications
Record the plan, cancellation and research theme separately; confirm a later publication before attributing findings to a meeting.