Thank you for including the screenshot, @dpchristianson. I can see how keeping old events on the page can feel like retaining irrelevant information. The Coming Up and To Do lists on the course homepage provide information aligned with your interest, and the Course Stream view also works this way. There is not an option in Canvas to hide past events in the Course Summary table, but you could propose that change to Canvas. Information on how to do that is on the page How do Ideas and Themes work in the Instructure Community? 

Creating an idea does not provide an immediate solution to the problem you described, though it is a solution. I’m going to mark it as such and hope that our colleagues who have a similar question will benefit.