On April 28, Public Affairs Section (PAS) conducted the Consulate’s first ever outreach trip to Peterborough, Ontario. Peterborough is modest-sized city in Central Ontario of 80,000 people, and the regional business, education, cultural, and health care hub. To create a strong foundation for the Consulate’s relationship, PAS visited a broad range of organizations in the city, meeting with representatives of the Peterborough Museum and Archive, the Peterborough Partnership Council on Immigrant Integration, Trent University, and the Peterborough Examiner, the city’s local paper. With this visit to Trent University, a mid-sized liberal arts university of 8000 undergraduates, the PAS team has established academic ties to every university in the Toronto region. At Trent, PAS discussed exchange and grants programs in meetings with American studies professors and the Consulate’s academic exchanges working group with the academic the international education office. This outreach trip was successful in breaking new ground in the Consulate’s cultural outreach in Ontario as many of these organizations’ representatives expressed interest in future collaboration with the Consulate. PA Toronto also visited the Peterborough Examiner – a major newspaper in the city and met with its Managing Editor Kennedy Gordon to learn more about the newspaper, its audience and topics of interest.
