Colin Boyd Shafer (b. 1983) is a documentary photographer and social sciences educator born in Kitchener. Most importantly, his daughter Isabel's first dip in any lake, at eight months of age, was at Port Stanley's Little Beach on the shores of Lake Erie.
In 2016, Shafer was chosen by the Governor General of Canada to do the original portraiture for They Desire A Better Country (2017), a book that commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Order of Canada.
Shafer's recent personal projects include INTERLOVE which tells interfaith love stories in Ontario, and Cosmopolis Toronto, a project that features someone from every country of the world who now calls Toronto home. Currently, Shafer is finishing a new project, Finding American: Stories of Immigration, which features audio-visual stories of immigration from all 50 US states.
Shafer's work has been featured in National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail, BBC News, and CBC. Shafer has also presented at TEDxToronto and at the United Nations Alliance of Civilization's Global Forum.
Shafer holds an M.Sc in Political Economy of Violence Conflict and Development from the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London, UK), a B.Ed from York University and a B.A.H. from Queen's University in Environmental Science and Psychology.
