I was sorry to read of the sudden and too-soon death of Queen's University historian Karen Dubinsky. I did not know her, but I was struck a long time ago by the range of her interests and the clever title of her (scholarly) book The Second Greatest Disappointment: Honeymooning and Tourism at Niagara Falls.
Above all, I was always impressed to follow the work she did studying Cuban, history music and culture, and Cuban Canadian relations in general. The Wikipedia entry on her gives a good account of that, and I'm copying a big chunk of it:
Dubinsky first visited Cuba in 1978 and lived in Havana intermittently beginning in 2004. Her visits led her to study Cuban history, music and culture, as well as unofficial relationships between Cubans and Canadians.
With Susan Lord, Dubinsky developed Queen's University's Cuban Culture and Society program, a collaboration between Queen's and the University of Havana that lasted 15 years. More than 350 Queen's students travelled to Cuba through the program, while more than 20 Cuban scholars, musicians, filmmakers, artists and curators participated in activities at Queen's and in Kingston. Several Cuban participants subsequently undertook master's or doctoral studies at Queen's. The program received the Queen's Award for International Educational Innovation in 2016 and the Canadian Bureau for International Education's Panorama Award in 2021.
Dubinsky also researched music as a form of political expression in contemporary Cuba. With Caridad Cumaná and Xenia Reloba, she co-edited the Spanish-language Habáname: La Ciudad Musical de Carlos Varela and its English-language edition, My Havana: The Musical City of Carlos Varela. She later published Cuba Beyond the Beach: Stories of Life in Havana.
Dubinsky co-hosted Cuban Serenade, a 13-episode podcast about Cuban musicians in Canada, with Freddy Monasterio, and produced a biweekly CFRC program about Cuban-Canadian music for two years. She also organized performances by Cuban musicians in Kingston and helped arrange honorary doctorates from Queen's for Cuban musicians Carlos Varela and Alex Cuba.
Her 2025 book, Strangely, Friends: A History of Cuban-Canadian Encounters, examined personal and cultural relationships between Cubans and Canadians, including exchanges involving educators, musicians, filmmakers, activists and international-development workers. The book received the 2026 Wilson Book Prize.
Cuba needs friends like Karen Dubinsky
