CIC Couchiching: A Civil Place to Disagree

The ability to have difficult conversations on questions of strategic and normative importance, and to listen and understand differing views, is essential to sustaining democracy and combatting the tides of polarization and extremism that push at our shores. This spirit defines the Canadian International Council (CIC) as a platform for civic engagement in international affairs, and it is embodied in the Couchiching conference, which has existed for nearly a century as a meeting place for ideas. In 2017, Couchiching merged with the CIC to carry forward this vital tradition.

This year’s CIC Couchiching conference, which will take place on 29 and 30 September at the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, focuses on transatlantic security and promoting democratic resilience. While the format may have changed, the mission remains: provide a commons for meaningful engagements, where Canadian and international voices can come together to exchange ideas.

Origins and Early Purpose

Couchiching, a lake near Orillia, Ontario, and a First Nation in another part of the province, in this case refers to what used to be the Couchiching Institute on Public Affairs, which has a history going back to 1932. 

For me, it is an institution that I grew up hearing my father (Eric Koch) talk about at the dinner table each August. It actually started as a 10-day public education seminar under the auspices of the newly formed Canadian Institute on Economic and International Affairs – later the Canadian Institute on Public Affairs. In 1932, propelled by a combination of idealism and pragmatism as the world grappled with the Great Depression, participants gathered at Geneva Park, run by the YMCA on the shores of Lake Couchiching and the home of the Chippewa Rama First Nation. Their purpose was to engage in a free exchange of ideas on common Canadian and global concerns. Indeed, the first conference theme was “Depression and Capitalism.” Until the last conference at Geneva Park in 2016, the Couchiching conference continued to draw influential speakers and people from all walks of life to this lovely lakeside setting.

A Commons for Civil Dialogue

Couchiching’s purpose remained consistent over the years: bringing people together to participate in a lively exchange of ideas on national and international matters of significance, in an effort to create a commons for meaningful engagement. My father would sum up Couchiching’s mission as “a good citizen is an informed citizen.” Conferences were designed to increase awareness and understanding about an issue, whether domestic or global, without advocacy or partisanship, so participants would leave better educated and well armed with new knowledge to help them make up their own minds.

Conversations that Shaped Canada and the World

The Couchiching conferences tackled so many topics, sometimes revisiting them over the decades. The last one to take place at the lake was “The Canada Project: Identity, Citizenship and Nationhood in a Changing World” in 2016. The 1985 conference was “Who in the World Needs Canada”; 1956 was “The New Canada at Home and Abroad”; and 1936 was “Britain and Canada within the Empire.” But they weren’t all about Canada: conferences tackled communism and consumerism, trade and defence, Latin America and Asia and the “New Europe,” diplomacy, biotechnology, the meaning of work, the arts, automation (1956) and the age of microchips (1983), and my first conference in 1986 – “The Future of the American Empire.”

In the 1950s, CBC Radio, through its Public Affairs division, began to broadcast the proceedings and the Institute became a household name across Canada. Later, in the 1960s, my father worked in Public Affairs at the CBC and was involved in producing these broadcasts and for a few years CBC carried the conference on television. In 1970, the relationship with the CBC came to an end but in the 1980s and into the 1990s, TV Ontario filmed the proceedings and in the 2000s, CPAC would do the same.

The list of speakers and participants over the years is mind boggling: prime ministers and premiers (sometimes before they were elected), so many Nobel laureates, so many Cabinet ministers, so many high-ranking diplomats and officials, journalists, academics, authors, film makers, philosophers not only from within Canada but from around the world – so many household names (sometimes before they were household names!). Often discussions under the trees by the lake, under the stars, over breakfast, or in a canoe or sailboat were opportunities for novel ideas to be floated in a safe, thoughtful setting among such a diverse audience (including accountants, farmers and retired librarians, my father used to say), especially useful for the policy makers who would go back to their capitals (federal or sub-federal) or headquarters (the UN comes to mind). The one we were most fond of recounting was when Escott Reid raised the possibility of a military alliance among North Atlantic countries – aka NATO – in 1947.

In 1979, the Institute changed its name from the Canadian Institute on Public Affairs to the Couchiching Institute on Public Affairs. In addition, Quebec nationalism was rising, and the Institute could not comfortably claim to represent all of Canada, as the conference took place every August in Ontario. But by the early 2000s, Couchiching began to hold Roundtables beyond Toronto and Geneva Park, including in Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, Thunder Bay, Montreal and Halifax.

Couchiching’s new Home

Couchiching’s relationship with the CIC – or the Canadian Institute for International Affairs, as it was before 2006 – dates back to its very beginnings, mostly because many key figures, not to mention participants, were involved in both organizations. It was only natural, then, in 2017 after the Institute wound down, that the CIC would take up the Couchiching mantle of offering a “civil place to disagree,” dedicated to advancing constructive dialogue on Canada’s place in the world and providing an incubator for innovative ideas on how to address the world’s most pressing problems. Some things may have changed since those post-Depression years, but some things have remained the same: the need for opportunities to hold thoughtful discussions and open conversations as we perennially wrestle with change.

Why Couchiching Endures

From its founding in 1932 to its revival under the CIC, Couchiching has been about one core mission: creating a space for open, civil, and meaningful dialogue. Today, as democracy faces new pressures and civic spaces shrink, this mission is more important than ever. Couchiching endures because it reminds us that an informed citizenry is the foundation of a healthy democracy.