Dear CEACS members,

I hope all of you are in good health and take special care in these pandemic times.

The presence of the virus in our region has an impact on our activities and plans, as well. The first, and most important, consequence is that after having consulted the country representatives, the Executive Committee has decided to POSTPONE our next international conference (which was planned for the fall of 2021) to the fall of 2022. However, we have to keep in mind that the mandate of the current EC will expire in September 2021. Normally, elections take place during the General Meeting at the CEACS conference. Since we are postponing the conference to 2022, the ELECTIONS will have to be done online in 2021 (technical details will be announced later). When the time comes, please encourage people to run for a position in the EC!

Like many other organizations, we are in a difficult position as a result of the various restrictions in these pandemic times. Given these restrictions, CEACS conference grants and Brno research grants
for members are now redundant. However, we still need to help keep our members active in and committed to Canadian Studies. We have come up with a list of possible activities and proposals:

1) Based on the very impressive series of events last year to celebrate Atwood80, next year we would like to carry on with Munro90  - readings, special issues, inviting students to make short videos, etc. Since her birthday is in mid-July, our events could be held in a broader period from June to September 2021.

2) A monthly offer of webinars - there could be someone from each country explaining briefly the historical links between the country in question and Canada, what attracts people in the country to Canada, what the "image" of Canada is in the country, and so on. These webinars could be directed at students, but also open for the general public - people could access them via our website or our Facebook.

3) A variant on this would be to offer lectures/talks on any Canadian Studies topic on our website or Facebook. Many of our members will be giving this kind of thing as part of their on-line teaching in the
coming months, and these too could be linked to our site or our Facebook, creating a kind of series of CS lectures on different topics.

4) Since we will not be offering CEACS conference or research grants for some time, the 2021 membership fee will be REDUCED BY 50% - this will just cover the publication costs of the association's journal.  We're pretty sure that this will meet with a positive response from you, our members - and maybe, some new members could be recruited!!!

It is very important to keep our membership stable - so much energy and expertise have been put into our programmes and activities so far, let's not give in to the hardships of our times.

I look forward to any comments from you on the above decisions and proposals, and of course to receiving new suggestions concerning our future activities and visibility.

With best wishes, stay safe,

Katalin