Acclaimed String Quartet brings health issues to the forefront
For the past 17 years, the members of the highly-acclaimed Lafayette String Quartet have used their voices to bring attention to issues around health and wellness through annual forums which have brought together top experts in the field of health and science for a series of dynamic discussions and lectures.
Founded in 1986, the Lafayette String Quartet created the annual Lafayette Health Awareness Series in 2005 to provide expert information on various health topics ranging from COVID and aging well to brain health and breast cancer—the latter of which both inspired the series and profoundly impacted the LSQ, following a 2001 diagnosis and treatment for one of its members.
Earlier this year, the quartet announced that 2022-23 would be their final season together. As part of their farewell season, the final Lafayette Health Awareness Forum will be held at the cathedral next Thursday October 6 at 7.00pm. Entitled "Our Planet, Our Health," the evening of speakers and music will explore our existence and the connections of our health and that of our precious planet.
Joining the members of the Lafayette String Quartet will be speakers Katlia Lafferty, Canada’s first Poet Laureate in Climate Change, Dr. Valeria Stoynova, one of the first proponents of “nature prescriptions” and one of the top researchers on the effects of Climate Change on human health, and Dr. Suzanne Simard, author of “Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest”, a great researcher and voice illuminating the powerful and collaborative connections of trees and other living things. The forum will begin with introductory remarks by broadcaster and former UVic chancellor Shelagh Rogers.
This forum will be live-streamed for those who are unable to attend in person. For those attending in person, all health protocols will be followed strictly, masks will be encouraged.
The Lafayette String Quartet will perform several times throughout the evening. Please join the members of the quartet and their partners who have helped make this forum possible — Drs. Allen Hayashi, Darlene Hamell, Amita Modi, Scott Hofer and Marjon Blouw, and Leah Potter — in what promises to be an evening filled with information and hope. On this timely topic as was the initial inspiration for this forum, we are better together as “What affects one of us – affects us all”.