2026 Featured Speakers
Amanda Jones
Bio
Amanda made national headlines in 2022 when she was targeted by extremists in her town for speaking out at a public library board meeting. She decided to fight back and took her harassers to court, while continuing to speak out at both the local and national level against the pro-censorship movement. Amanda chronicles what it is like being the target of white Christian nationalists and the importance of standing up for intellectual freedom, in her book That Librarian: Fighting Book Banners in Today’s America.
Appearance Date
Closing Keynote: Friday January 30, 2026 @ 3:45pm EST
David A. Robertson
Bio
David A. Robertson is one of the most celebrated writers working in Canada today. The bestselling author of the six-book series for young readers The Misewa Saga, the picture book Little Shoes, and adult titles All the Little Monsters and 52 Ways to Reconcile, David is also the two-time winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award (for On the Trapline and When We Were Alone), and the recipient of numerous other awards, among them the Writers’ Union of Canada’s Freedom to Read Award. His books have also been shortlisted for the prestigious TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award and the Ontario Library Association’s Silver Birch Award, among others. In early 2025, David A. Robertson was announced as Canada’s nomination for the 2026 Hans Christian Andersen Award. In 2026, his children’s imprint, Swift Water Books, focused on books by Indigenous authors and illustrators, will publish its first titles. A sought-after speaker and educator, Dave is a member of the Norway House Cree Nation and lives in Winnipeg.
Appearance Date
Thursday Keynote: Thursday January 29, 2026 @ 3:45pm EST
Stephanie Sinclair
Bio
Stephanie Sinclair is Publisher of McClelland & Stewart, an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada. She is a Cree, Ojibwe, and German/Jewish settler. She is a fierce advocate and activist, serving as a mentor and curator, and organizing publishing events to challenge colonial practices in publishing and to advance the work of reconciliation. Sinclair is the co-editor of the bestselling anthologies You Were Made for This World and A Steady Brightness of Being. She lives in Hamilton, Ontario, with her two children.
Appearance Date
Thursday Keynote: Thursday January 29, 2026 @ 3:45pm EST
Mattea Roach
Bio
Mattea Roach is the host of CBC’s BOOKENDS WITH MATTEA ROACH. In the spring of 2022, they appeared on the game show Jeopardy!, embarking on a 23-game winning streak and becoming the winningest Canadian contestant in the history of the program. They followed up their initial run on Jeopardy! with appearances in the first two editions of Jeopardy Masters!, finishing as runner-up and in fifth place in 2023 and 2024 respectively. Roach appeared as the winning panelist on Canada’s great book debate, CANADA READS, in 2023, championing Kate Beaton’s graphic novel Ducks. They hosted The Backbench, a podcast focused on Canadian politics, and is currently working on their first book. Originally from Halifax, Roach now lives and works in Toronto.
Appearance Date
Opening Keynote: Wednesday January 28, 2026 @ 6:15PM EST
Antonio Michael Downing
Bio
Antonio Michael Downing is the host of CBC’s The Next Chapter. Stories, whether sung, written or said, are his heart’s passion. Downing is the author of the acclaimed memoir Saga Boy: My Life of Blackness and Becoming, the children’s book Stars In My Crown, and his debut novel Black Cherokee. His musical alter ego, John Orpheus, is known for his upbeat fusion beats. He has performed internationally, opening for acts like Liam Gallager in the UK, and has released three albums in a musical journey spanning two decades. He graduated from the University of Waterloo with a degree in English Literature. Downing was raised in Trinidad, and has lived in several Canadian cities including Thunder Bay, Winnipeg and Scarborough, before settling in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont.
Appearance Date
Opening Keynote: Wednesday January 28, 2026 @ 6:15PM EST
Ron Deibert
Bio
Ron Deibert, (O.C., O.Ont., PhD, University of British Columbia) is a professor of political science, and the founder and director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto. The Citizen Lab is an interdisciplinary laboratory focusing on research, development, and high-level strategic policy and legal engagement at the intersection of information and communication technologies, human rights, and global security. Deibert was a co-founder and a principal investigator of the OpenNet Initiative (2003-2014) and Information Warfare Monitor (2003-2012) projects. Deibert was one of the founders and (former) VP of global policy and outreach for Psiphon, one of the world’s leading digital censorship circumvention services.
In 2017, Deibert was included in Foreign Policy Magazine’s 2017 “Global Thinkers” list. In 2015, Deibert received the Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award on behalf of the Citizen Lab. Deibert is also the recipient of the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity (2014), the Advancement of Intellectual Freedom in Canada Award from the Canadian Library Association (2014), and the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression Vox Libera Award (2010). In 2019, Deibert received an honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Guelph. In 2020, he was awarded two ISA (International Studies Association) awards: the ISA Canada Distinguished Scholar award and the STAIR Distinguished Scholar ‘Transversal Acts’ award.
In 2013, Deibert was appointed to the Order of Ontario and awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medal, for being “among the first to recognize and take measures to mitigate growing threats to communications rights, openness and security worldwide.” In 2022, he was named Officer of the Order of Canada – the country’s second highest civilian order of merit.
Appearance Date
Spotlight: Thursday January 29, 2026 @ 10:45AM EST
Mychal Threets
Bio
Mychal Threets is a librarian, mental health advocate, and the library’s number one fan (according to himself, admittedly). He grew up in Fairfield, CA, right between Sacramento and San Francisco. He was raised in his local library as a home-school kid. He got his first library card at the age of five and was hooked on libraries from there. He got his first library job as a library shelver at the library he grew up in and worked his way up to become Supervising Librarian of that very same library. He is very open about his mental health. He talks about it in hopes that it’ll help others in their mental health journey. He is adamant about encouraging people to believe him when he says he’s happy they are here. He considers it an honor to the library people who raised him that he is a recipient of the 2024 “I Love My Librarian” award from the American Library Association, one of School Library Journal’s 2024 Movers and Shakers, one of TIME Magazine’s 2024 Next Generation Leaders, a 2025 TIME100 creator, and a 2025 The Webby Awards winner for social impact.
Appearance Date
Spotlight: Thursday January 29, 2026 @ 10:45AM EST
Amie Archibald-Varley
Bio
Amie Archibald-Varley is a #1 National Best Selling Author of the Book, “The Wisdom of Nurses”, a highly sought-after Mental Health and Health Equity Speaker with the National Speakers Bureau, an award-winning thought leader, podcaster and an emerging digital storyteller and filmmaker. Amie is the CEO of Advancing Health Equity, Together, a company which provides leadership, advisory and strategic consultation related to anti-racism, and health equity in culture, policies and practices of large health systems and governments, with a specific focus on promoting respect for equity-deserving groups. Amie is the host of the successful podcast “The Gritty Nurse ” a podcast that discusses hot topics in health and healthcare at the intersection of policy and politics. Gritty Nurse hit #2 in Apple Podcasts in Medicine for Canada. Amie also hosts the new show Atypical, a podcast focused on navigating life’s uncertainties. She inspires others to speak their truths and brings communities together to engage in “courageous conversations.”
Appearance Date
Spotlight: Thursday January 29, 2026 @ 2:15PM EST
Dr. Haesun Moon
Bio
Haesun Moon, Ph.D., is a communication scientist, an educator, and author. Haesun received her Ph.D. in Adult Education and Community Development from University of Toronto. She cares about people experiencing better conversations at home and at work – and she does that by training, coaching, and consulting. She believes that conversations can change the world, and she defines this process as hosting dialogic conditions in which people participate to imagineer and perform their preferred change. Her academic and professional research in coaching dialogues and pedagogy from the University of Toronto led to development of a simple coaching model, Dialogic Orientation Quadrant (DOQ).
Appearance Date
Spotlight: Thursday January 29, 2026 @ 2:15PM EST
Dr. Kelly Fritsch
Bio
Kelly Fritsch is Canada Research Chair in Disability, Health, and Social Justice and Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University. As a disabled woman and scholar, she advances anti-ableist, anti-racist, and anti-oppressive approaches that aim to transform how knowledge is produced, how access is created, and how social justice is practiced. She is the author of We Move Together (2021), an award-winning children’s book about ableism, accessibility, and disability culture, and editor of Disability Injustice: Confronting Criminalization in Canada (2022) and Keywords for Radicals: The Contested Vocabulary of Late-Capitalist Struggle (2016). Her forthcoming book, Broken Worlds, Disabled Kin: Strategies for Collective Survival (2026), centers disability justice and culture as vital forces for building more just and livable futures. Fritsch also edits the Disability Culture and Politics Series at UBC Press and serves on the editorial board of Disability Studies Quarterly. Across her research, teaching, and community contributions, Fritsch is committed to challenging structural ableism and cultivating practices of access and justice that reshape collective life.
Appearance Date
Spotlight: Friday January 30, 2026 @ 9:15AM EST
Christa Big Canoe
Bio
Christa Big Canoe is an Anishinabek woman, mother and lawyer. She is from Georgina Island First Nation. She has been a D/Clerk of the court and an administrative Justice of the Peace in and for the Northwest Territories. Christa was policy counsel and lead for Legal Aid Ontario’s Aboriginal Justice Strategy prior to becoming Aboriginal Legal Services (ALS) Legal Director in 2011. She took a 2.5-year leave of absence to be senior and then Lead Commission Counsel to the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Christa has been before all levels of court, including the Supreme Court of Canada. She represents families at Inquest proceedings, including six of the Seven Fallen Feather families. She has also been before various tribunals and standing committees providing Indigenous perspective and representation.
She was named a change maker in Canadian Lawyer’s top 25 Most Influential in the justice system in 2017. In 2021, Christa was the first recipient of Alnoba’s Moment of Truth Award and she was one of the Spirit of Barbra Schlifer Award recipients. Dalhousie’s Faculty of Management presented her with the 2022 Scotiabank Ethical Leadership Award. In 2025, she was a recipient of the King Charles III Coronation Medal Christa passionately advocates for Indigenous women and children in multiple forums and legal processes.
Appearance Date
Spotlight: Thursday January 29, 2026 @ 2:15PM EST
Shawn Micallef
Bio
Shawn Micallef is the author of Frontier City: Toronto on the Verge of Greatness (2017), The Trouble With Brunch: Work Class and the Pursuit of Leisure (2014) and Full Frontal TO: Exploring Toronto’s Vernacular Architecture (2012). The updated and expanded edition of his first book, Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto, was published in 2024. He’s a Toronto Star columnist, civics instructor at University of Toronto, and a Senior Fellow at Massey College where he was also a 2011-2012 Southam Journalism Fellow. Shawn is a co-founder of Spacing, a magazine about Canadian cities and urban issues. In 2002, while a resident at the Canadian Film Centre’s Media Lab, he co-founded [murmur], a location-based mobile phone documentary project established in over 20 cities globally.
Appearance Date
Spotlight: Friday January 30, 2026 @ 10:45AM EST
Professor Nandini Ramanujam
Bio
Professor Nandini Ramanujam is the Co-Director and Director of Programs of the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism at McGill University’s Faculty of Law. She is the McGill representative for the Scholars at Risk Network and served on the Steering Committee of the Scholars at Risk Network, Canada section from 2016-22. Nandini Ramanujam’s research and teaching interests include Law and Development, Institutions and Governance, Economic Justice, Food Security and Food Safety, academic freedom, the role of civil society and the Fourth Estate (Media) in promotion of the rule of law, as well as the exploration of interconnections between field based human rights work and theoretical discourses. She received her DCL in Economics from Oxford University.
Appearance Date
Spotlight: Friday January 30, 2026 @ 2:15PM EST
Kim Silk
Bio
Kimberly Silk is a librarian, independent consultant, and sessional lecturer. Her background in data librarianship and research data management supports her work building capacity in libraries to use evaluation and data to inform strategic planning and demonstrate impact. Kim is a graduate of the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto and has been an instructor there for over a decade, teaching Program Evaluation, Data Librarianship, and supervising the Master of Information Practicum Program. She lives with her family in Toronto, Canada.
Appearance Date
Spotlight: Friday January 30, 2026 @ 2:15PM EST
Dr. James Turk
Bio
Jim is Director of the Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University. Prior founding and leading CFE since 2015, Jim was Executive Director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, previously having been an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto where he taught Canadian Studies. He has also held several senior positions in the Canadian trade union movement. In 2024, Jim was honoured by being named the first recipient of the Canadian Federation of Library Associations Intellectual Freedom Award for outstanding contributions to intellectual freedom in Canada.
Appearance Date
Spotlight: Saturday January 31, 2026
Dr. Kaitlyn Regehr
Bio
DR. Kaitlyn Regehr is a leading expert on the cultural impacts of social media. She is an Associate Professor at University College London, lecturing on digital literacy, a prominent voice in the media, a key influence in policy circles, and a mother of two. Dr. Regehr has provided consultation to members of the House of Lords, to Members of Parliament, the Metropolitan Police, and the Scottish Government. Her research fed into the Online Safety Act and cyberflashing legislation in the UK. She appears regularly in the media as an expert on this subject, including on BBC News, ITV, BBC Woman’s Hour, Channel 4, and in The Economist. Originally from Toronto, she is now based in London.
Appearance Date
Spotlight: Virtual Conference Session – Available On-Demand