The annual National Trust conference is Canada’s largest heritage learning and networking event. Held in a different part of Canada every year, this national conference brings together a wide-range of people keeping Canada’s heritage alive: from grassroots advocates, professionals and planners, to elected officials, policy makers, and students.

Hindsight 2020: Conservation, Disruption, and the Future of Heritage

HINDSIGHT 2020 will explore heritage conservation’s disruptive role in a 21st century defined by resource scarcity, climate change and sustainability. In an era seeking heroic solutions, historic preservation provides transformative ideas, highlighting the importance of adaptation, minimal intervention, reversibility and maintainability. While Edmonton is the research, refining, and manufacturing heart of the Canadian oil industry, it is also a hotbed of environmental innovation and activism. HINDSIGHT 2020 will be hosted by a vibrant historic city at the very forefront of the climate crisis, one wrestling with its petroleum legacy and the imperative to transition to a low-carbon future.

Rather than postpone or cancel the upcoming joint conference, we are pleased to announce that we have begun planning virtual conference sessions, in parallel with some in-person events that would be held in Edmonton, if meetings become possible again by that time.