Join the
WATER TOWN HALL
with special guest Janine MacLoed
1-2 pm EST
TUESDAY, June 30, 2026
Join us for an hour of grounding, learning, and conversation with water — its struggles, its stories, and its power to call us toward something different.
We’ll open with a brief living water acknowledgement to arrive together, then welcome Janine MacLeod for a presentation drawing on her research into what she calls liberation hydrologies — the idea that water’s deep emotional and cultural resonances can become a force of resistance against the systems that commodify and harm it. From there, we’ll open the floor for a townhall conversation: what’s alive for you around water right now?
About Janine MacLeod
Janine MacLeod is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University, and co-editor (with Astrida Neimanis and Cecilia Chen) of Thinking with Water. Her dissertation, Liberation Hydrologies: Capitalism, Hegemony and the Meanings of Water, examines our historical moment through a hydrological lens — tracing the fundamental tension between life-giving waters and colonial-capital. Drawing inspiration from Indigenous-led struggles for water and life, she proposes that water can be turned into a connective medium and animating force for transformative social movements. Her writing has appeared in The Walrus, Petrocultures, Downstream, and the Vancouver Observer.
Janine is also one of the creative minds behind the Council’s new Water is Life Art Challenge, bringing her rare gift for weaving rigorous scholarship with imaginative and poetic ways of relating to water.
You can learn more about Water is Life Art Challenge and sign up for more information, here.
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The Council of Canadians is a grassroots, nonpartisan, independent organization funded almost entirely by tens of thousands of individual Canadian donors. We do not take any money from governments or corporations. Due to our political work, the Council of Canadians is not a registered charity and are unable to provide charitable tax receipts.
