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VIRTUAL EXPO: June 1, 2024 to August 21, 2024

IN-PERSON EXPO: April 19, 2025 and April 20, 2025 | Downtown Ottawa

Dr. Julie Ponesse

Author bio:

Dr. Julie Ponesse has a PhD in Philosophy (Western, 2008) with areas of specialization in ethics and ancient philosophy.

She has a Masters in Philosophy with Collaborative Specialization in Bioethics from the University of Toronto and a Diploma in Ethics from the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University.

Dr. Ponesse has published in the areas of ancient philosophy, ethical theory, and applied ethics, and has taught at universities in Canada and the US for 20 years.

Featured books:

My Choice: The Ethical Case Against COVID-19 Vaccine

In the fall of 2021, Dr. Julie Ponesse saw her academic career of 20 years fall apart after she refused a Canadian university’s COVID vaccine mandate. This is her account of the battle and its aftermath, written with passion and intelligence. But Dr. Ponesse’s story travels beyond the personal and examines the ethical and philosophical dimensions of our pandemic response.

If there is anyone out there who feels alone in the struggle to preserve personal choice and freedom, this book offers some very human advice on how to move forward and makes it clear that your voice deserves to be heard.

Our Last Innocent Moment

If there can possibly be anything good to come out of the horrors of the last three years, it is this: some of us, at least, have been shaken awake. We now know that we are under attack. We are under attack not so much for the particular things we say or do but simply for wanting to be free, for wanting to be able to think through our lives, and for wanting our lives to be the products of our own choices.

Whatever happened over the last few years, we have been fundamentally changed by it. There’s no reclaiming the innocence we lost. Life is more serious now. Our obligations are more weighty, or just more apparent. There are certain truths we came to see that can never be unseen. And everything is so much more complicated than we thought.

This is a dark time for humanity. But darkness always creates the greatest opportunities for growth and self-awareness, and for us to intentionally remake ourselves for the better. The moment is upon us. We can’t reclaim the innocence we lost in 2020, but we can use our experiences to remake a more innocent world for ourselves and for our children. We can, I dare say, create something even greater.