Burt Konzak is the Founder and Director of the Toronto Academy of Karate. A world renowned martial artist, scholar, and teacher, he has been a University of Toronto professor for over twenty-five years, teaching ethics, Asian philosophy, and martial arts, and has also lectured at universities across North America and Japan. He has studied in Canada, the United States, Japan, and Israel, has been the recipient of the prestigious Ford Foundation Fellowship and other academic honors, and is the author of many scholarly publications on ethics, mental health, Asian philosophy, and martial arts. He is also the author of the award-winning children's book, Noguchi the Samurai , as well North America's #1 rated self-defense book: Girl Power: Self-Defense for Teens , named by the Toronto Star as one of the best books for 1999. His newest book, Samurai Spirit: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Life , was released by McClelland-Stewart in October of 2002 and received a glowing full-page review in the Sunday Toronto Star. Dr. Konzak was invited on the popular television shows Body and Health and More to Life to discuss Samurai Spirit and demonstrate martial arts and was the subject of an enthusiastic two page article in the Nikka Times, Canada's Japanese language newspaper.
A renowned children's teacher, he has been the subject of a four page article in National Geographic World for the impact he has had on youth and has appeared on the covers of the best known international martial arts magazines. His school, the Toronto Academy of Karate, has won the highly coveted Consumers' Choice Award for best Martial Arts and Self-Defense School. He and the Academy have been written about in major features in virtually every significant Toronto publication including The Globe and Mail, Toronto Life, The Toronto Sun, The Toronto Star, and The National Post. He has been the subject of several hour long television shows on CFMT and TV Ontario and has demonstrated his martial arts on CBC's Man Alive, CTV's Canada AM and many other programmes in both the United States and Canada.
Dr. Konzak has taught workshops all over the world at Zen monasteries, martial arts dojos, yoga schools, universities, and business and service organizations in Tokyo, Kyoto, Mishima, San Diego, San Francisco, New York, Mexico City, Calgary and across Ontario. He teaches annually the enormously popular Rocky Mountain Martial Arts Seminar in Banff, Alberta - combining mountain climbing white water canoeing, and intense martial arts.
He has developed youth programmes for school boards across the country as well as directing, for over ten years, the University of Toronto Children's Karate Camp. He has also designed martial arts and self-defense programmes for corporations and government agencies across Canada and the United States. He has taught cabinet ministers and young children, professional athletes and middle-aged people who have never before exercised. People in his classes have continued coming back year after year, many for decades.
