The Long Sixties – Kingston Book Launch
April 16, 2026
7:00pm (EDT)
Novel Idea Bookstore , 156 Princess Street, Kingston , Ontario, Canada
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Join lifelong activists and authors Lib Spry and Joan Kuyek for the launch of The Long Sixties: Stories from the New Left.
In The Long Sixties, seven veteran political activists from the sixties, all still engaged in campaigns and organizations across Canada, tell their stories of transformational activism. What could veteran activists from the sixties teach about activism? In addition to telling their stories — how they got involved, why they stay involved, how they persevered into their twilight years — they also critically reflect on their victories and defeats, their personal and political challenges, what they learned, and how their perspectives deepened and changed along the way
Lib Spry has been theatre-maker for over sixty years as a director, writer, producer, educator, and translator, specializing in political, non-traditional, clown and physical theatre. She is a recognized teacher of Theatre of the Oppressed. She has founded three theatre companies: Theatre Agile (2011 to present), Passionate Balance (1989-1996) and, with Shirley Barrie, the award-winning Straight Stitching Productions (1986-1993). She has published in Canadian Theatre Review, Theatre Research in Canada/Recherches théâtrales au Canada, alt.theatre, and has a chapter in the book Playing Boal. She is presently working on a solo show It’s in Our Bones, and ¡Unsettling!, a life-size board-game for settlers to look at their relationships to Indigenous realities.
Joan Newman Kuyek is a writer, researcher and community organizer living in Ottawa. In 1965-70, she worked with the Kingston Community Project (KCP), which was instrumental in getting changes to the Landlord and Tenant Act and establishing the first Legal Clinic in Ontario. She has been an organizer all her life, living in Sudbury from 1970 to 1999 and then in Ottawa as community-focused mining activist. In Sudbury, she helped organize Women Helping Women, Wives Supporting the Strike and Better Beginnings Better Futures Project. She was also a founding National Coordinator of MiningWatch Canada. She is the author of many articles and four books that share her learnings form these experiences.
