To end we would like to thank the people who helped make our conference and this special edition possible. We would like to thank Bryan Thomas who researched and advised us on potential contributors and did much of the background work we needed to host this event. Close to the conference itself we were aided by the stellar work of Arthur Wilson, Melissa Casco, and Bernadette Mount, the latter of whom stepped into the breach at the last minute and attended to the enormous number of tasks needed to make an event like ours a success. We would not have been able to convene our scholars without the help of generous sponsors (see http://nhlc2012.ca/sponsors/). With respect to this special journal edition, we thank Andrew Martin and Marcelo Rodriguez Ferrere for their organizational support and editing and review comments on many of the contributions; our anonymous peer-reviewers for their detailed feed- back; ASLME President Mary-Anne Bobinski for her sage counsel; and Ted Hutchinson and his JLME team for their terrific editorial work. Final and heartfelt thanks to our contributors for their vibrant presentations and thought-provoking articles.