“Mark has a knack for two things: identifying issues on the horizon, and presenting complicated ideas and arguments into a digestible, understandable format.” - Troy Lanigan, president of the Strong and Free Network

For event planners who want the details in third person:

Mark Milke Ph. D. is the founder and president of the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy. Mark is a public policy analyst and author with six books, over 70 studies, and over 1,000 columns published in the last 25 years. His policy work has been published by numerous think tanks in Canada and internationally, including the Fraser Institute, the Montreal Economic Institute, American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation, and Brussels-based Centre for European Studies. He is editor of the Aristotle Foundation’s first book, The 1867 Project: Why Canada Should Be Cherished–Not Cancelled. Mark is also the volunteer president of the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Calgary where he drove ahead the commissioning, fundraising, and installation of a statue of Churchill in Calgary on June 6, 2024—the 80th anniversary of D-Day. His sixth book, The Victim Cult: How the culture of blame hurts everyone and wrecks civilizations is an Amazon bestseller. You can find Mark’s columns in media across Canada including in the National Post, Globe and Mail, Maclean’s and also in the United States in National Review.

Apart from the policy and academic work, Mark’s first job as a kid was delivering newspapers and his second and third jobs were digging ditches and sweeping up sawdust. He paid his way through university by tree-planting for three summers in northern Canada and paid off his student loan by teaching English in Japan for two years.

Born and raised in Kelowna, British Columbia, Mark lives in Calgary and is an active hiker, skier, and runner with an interest in architecture, photography, cities, and history. His website is www.markmilke.com. Mark Milke’s Linked In profile is here.

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On the more personal side...

History has always fascinated me.

As a kid, I used to read the World Book encyclopedia. I’d read about Winston Churchill, Canadian prime ministers and American presidents. I’d learn about history's tyrants: Hitler, Stalin, Mao and others who battered our world.

(For those who wonder if I was normal—partly: I also read comic books: The Archie ones and Marvel's Spider-Man, the latter my favorite.)

But history and ideas: I always wondered what led to history’s tragedies and the opposite: why some countries and people flourish.

Answer: Ideas.

Harmful ideas drove the last century’s tyrannies—communism and Nazism.

And what led to the abolition of slavery, equal rights for women, and for a country to thrive and provide freedom and opportunity? 

As a start: Better ideas, ones grounded in reality about human nature and the world around us, and also in possibilities.

Family stuff: Dodging bullets

Individuals also matter: Leaders such as Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt.

But so too our families and their choices. 

I recall talks with grandparents, uncles, aunts and my parents. Some family details: On the paternal side, my grandmother came from Ukraine but not before her family was transported around the Soviet Union in the 1920s.

Being of German “kulak” stock, my grandmother was lucky to escape Ukraine before the 1930s. Coming to Canada, she settled in Edmonton where she met her husband, my Polish-born grandfather. He arrived in Canada, disembarking in Saint John in 1929, and settled in Edmonton. 

Both dodged historical bullets - Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union - and knew it. It's why they never had any sympathy for "reds" or fascists; it's why they were always grateful they left Europe before both the Nazis and the Soviets rolled over it.

Perhaps their influence explains my early interest in history, my attempts to figure it all out.

Speaking of dodged bullets, my maternal great-great grandfather came from Prussia, ended up in Wisconsin and fought for the north in the Civil War. I have a picture of him in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1865. (That's him to the right.) He was 29. Post-war, he eventually he made his way to Saskatchewan.

All those individuals helped create my history, as a Canadian instead of a Pole, German, Ukrainian or American.  

Ideas and Individuals and choices

Ideas and individuals matter to history, great big History with a capital “H" and also to our own histories.

That’s why one of my talks describes how ideas, individuals and interests - our priorities and what we choose to do with them - combine to change our world, your world. 

The career details include an M.A. thesis on why the 'unique' East Asian values argument prevalent in some 1990s-era capitals (see Beijing circa 1989 and after) was a political excuse to repress citizens. My PhD in International Relations and Political Philosophy came with a dissertation: I looked at why some Canadians are reflexively anti-American. (There are historical reasons but not justifiable modern ones.)    

Click on the following links to find my columns, books and Linked In profile.