Next Meet Up June 13

Jerome sends around word that the next meet up is June 13 at 10 AM, most likely at the same venue as before. Speaker and topic.....

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Just a little advance notice; we will be having our breakfast club meeting on Saturday June 13 at 10 am. I will confirm the venue the week before; it will most likely be our traditional place.

The topic is George Leslie Mackay and the making of "Taiwanese"

The speaker is Michael Stainton, a brief bio of him is below. As you can see, he is well-qualified to speak on George Mackay. If you have been in Taiwan and have not heard of George Leslie Mackay or Mackay Hospital in Taipei, you need to. Mackay is an important figure of Taiwan's ex-pat past.

Rev. Michael Stainton M.Div. M.A.

June 2009
Michael Stainton 史邁克牧師first went to Taiwan as a language student in 1974. Since then he has spent most of his life with Taiwan, even while living in Toronto. He is founder and secretary of the Canadian Mackay Committee. He is a Disciples of Christ 基督使徒教會minister, and was a missionary in Taiwan serving the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan from 1980 to 1991. It was there he first learned about George Leslie Mackay. In 1997 he organized the first international conference on George Leslie Mackay and his legacy in Taiwan and Canada, at the University of Toronto. He subsequently organized the Canadian Mackay Committee 加拿大馬偕委員會in 2000. In September 2005 he was in Taiwan as a consultant to a documentary on Mackay, “The Black Bearded Barbarian”, produced for OMNI TV. In 2006 he organized a conference on Canadian Missionaries in Asia, in which Mackay was one of the missionaries discussed. In 2007 he organized a panel on “Missionaries in Unaccustomed Contexts” at the Canadian Asian Studies Association East Asian Conference加拿大亞洲學會, where he presented on “George Leslie Mackay and the Head Tax” 馬偕與人頭稅. He was consultant and wrote the interpretive text for the new (2008) display of Taiwan Aboriginal Artifacts in the Royal Ontario Museum.

Michael is a Research Associate of the York Centre for Asian Studies約克大學亞洲研究中心where he is a specialist in Taiwan. He is also organizer for a research cluster on Canadian missionaries in Asia and organized an international symposium on Religion and Rights in China 中國宗教與人權研討會, which took place May 31.

Michael developed an interest in anthropology as a missionary in Taiwan working in rural community development with the Austronesian indigenous minority of Taiwan. He has pursued study in anthropology since 1992 and is currently a delinquent Ph.D candidate in Social Anthropology at York University. His to-be-completed dissertation is on the inhesion of religion, aboriginality and local politics among the Tayal 泰雅people.

He is an active in the Canadian Taiwanese community, and a member of Taiwanese United Church in Toronto多倫多台灣聯合教會. He is president會長of the Taiwanese Human Rights Association of Canada加拿大台灣人權協會.

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