ERAO PRESENTS ZOOM TALK

"Amelia Earhart’s Fate is Not a Mystery" with Dr. Ian MacKay, retired uOttawa professor.

Wednesday, October 16 at 10:30 am

For more than a decade and a half Ian has been closely following developments in the search for Amelia Earhart’s fate, informed by careful, science-based research from an American interest group centred on historic aircraft.

Join us for a ZOOM talk with Dr. Ian MacKay whose talk on Earhart sticks to the facts as best they can be determined.

Many of us know of Amelia Earhart only as a flyer who disappeared sometime in the first half of the 20th century, that her fate is a great, enduring mystery and that Earhart was a superb flyer. Only the first of these three beliefs is true. There are also a sizable number of conspiracy theories explaining that mystery, ranging from a popular one based on the plot of 1943 movie starring Rosalind Russell and Fred MacMurray to the usual suspects: aliens, foreigners, and feigning death.

For more than a decade and a half Ian has been closely following developments in the search for Amelia Earhart’s fate, informed by careful, science-based research from an American interest group centred on historic aircraft. While textbook writing is no tutorial for novel writing, Ian is attempting to write a historical novel based on the famous venture during which Earhart disappeared. While a novel demands at least some fiction, Ian’s talk on Earhart sticks to the facts as best they can be determined.

Wednesday, October 16 at 10:30 am - ZOOM

Ian is retired from a 40-year career as professor in the Department of Linguistics, University of Ottawa, where he taught in both official languages. Much of his research involved the acquisition of pronunciation when learning a second language at various starting ages. In spring 2023, Cambridge University Press published his most recent textbook titled Phonetics and Speech Science, which covers the sounds of human speech with reference to linguistic, anatomical, aerodynamic, acoustic, and perceptual foundations. His 2014 textbook on the acoustics of speech, published by Allyn&Bacon, remains popular. In addition to the topics covered by these two textbooks, Ian also taught a graduate seminar on the origins of human language.

Something that members of the Education Retirees Association of Ottawa may be interested in is this: Ian was a member of a three person task force at uOttawa that created the then-new masters program in Orthophonie (speech-language pathology) and Audiologie (audiology). Ian taught in the first year of the program, then returned to his own department.

See our latest ERAO emails with details on how to register for our Zoom talk "Amelia Earhart’s Fate is Not a Mystery" on Wednesday, October 16 at 10:30 am. Be sure to check your email inbox regularly.

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