PDTCA 2025

Providing a flexible environment is key for students to achieve success in Outreach Settings. An ongoing question has been how do we provide structure around the flexibility to support student success.

Join us to discover how we created systems that provide high levels of support while holding high expectations. This method has enabled our campuses to truly reach students where they are at and reach their personal goals.

This session examines the history of Congo as a case study of Imperialism… from Leopold’s Congo to ‘Independence’. It focuses on the roles of foreign actors, including Canada, and their motives. Were they truly motivated by the enlightened Idealism they professed or the dark Realism described by Joseph Conrad, “The conquest of the earth is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much”? The session quotes from "Heart of Darkness" to illustrate the continuity of Realism in Imperial policy from Leopold's Congo to ‘Independence’ and challenges many of our most cherished historical myths… including the admission in a DND document that Canadian Peacekeepers played a vital role in Prime Minister Lumumba’s capture leading to his assassination. Kwame Nkrumah, Politburo members and US NSC staff explain how UN Peacekeepers were misused for Neocolonial control in Congo. As we shall see in Part 2, this quote regarding Eisenhower’s order to kill Lumumba still applies today, "the norms of private life and of a polity regulated by law are only with difficulty invoked in global politics.” Whether the scramble for rubber, copper, coltan or cobalt... in International Politics, "The strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must". We will explore the implications of this history for Social Studies Curricula.

This session examines the history of Congo as a case study of Imperialism… from ‘Independence’ to the ongoing Congo Wars to todays Scramble for Rare Earth Minerals...
“Where formerly the natives hardly knew how to get their daily food, now European enterprise, has brought [them] unthought-of wealth” - King Leopold
“The horror, the horror” - Conrad in “Heart of Darkness”
“Apple works to protect the environment and to safeguard the well-being of the millions of people touched by our supply chain” - Apple Inc.
“Our daily lives are powered by a human and environmental catastrophe in the Congo. The scale of destruction caused by cobalt mining in the name of renewable energy is without contemporary parallel.” - Kara in “Cobalt Red”

Topics include - Lumumba’s assassination, Hammarskjold’s death, Katangan succession, Mobutu’s rise, The Rwandan Genocide, Kagame’s rise and Rwanda/Uganda’s invasion of Congo (5 million deaths). It focuses on the roles of foreign actors, including Canada, and their motives. Were they truly motivated by the enlightened Idealism they professed or by the dark Realism described by Joseph Conrad, “It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale”? This session quotes from "Heart of Darkness" to illustrate the continuity of Realism in Imperial policy from Leopold to the present and challenges many of our most cherished historical myths including our ‘Peacekeeping’ missions … and make it embarrassingly clear that General Dallaire’s presentation of Paul Kagame in “Shake Hands with the Devil” as a hero of Idealism masks the truth of Kagame’s massive war crimes. “What redeems it is the idea only” (Conrad). Boutros-Ghali, (“Was this not Fashoda?”) and others describe how UN Peacekeepers were misused by our Anglo-American Alliance to wrest control in Rwanda and Congo from France (Franc Afrique) and if that was a Geopolitical error… as now China is the rising Neocolonial Master of Congo. We will also explore the implications of all this history for Social Studies Curricula.