Massey Lectures

The Massey Lectures are an annual series of five public lectures by distinguished Canadian and international writers, thinkers and scholars on issues of contemporary significance. The University of Toronto’s Massey College, along with CBC and the House of Anansi Press, currently co-hosts the Massey Lectures.

History

The Massey Lectures were established by the CBC in 1961 in honour of the founder of Massey College at the University of Toronto, the former Governor General of Canada Vincent Massey. The lectures feature renowned Canadian and international authorities speaking on issues of broad contemporary significance.

The subject matter and structure of the lectures has traditionally been negotiated with producers of the CBC radio program Ideas, occasionally resulting in disputes. For example, the 1996 lectures, scheduled to feature British economist and futurist Robert Theobald, were cancelled because Theobald and CBC producers could not agree upon a final manuscript for the lectures.

Prior to 1989, the lectures were recorded for broadcast in the CBC studios in Toronto. Between 1989 and 2002, the lectures were given in public at the University of Toronto. Since 2002, the lectures have been delivered and recorded in five different Canadian cities in early fall, then broadcast on the CBC radio program Ideas and published at the same time by House of Anansi Press.

The Lectures

1961: Barbara Ward, The Rich Nations and the Poor Nations
1962: Northrop Frye, The Educated Imagination
1963: Frank Underhill, The Image of Confederation
1964: C.B. Macpherson, The Real World of Democracy
1965: John Kenneth Galbraith, The Underdeveloped Country
1966: Paul Goodman, The Moral Ambiguity of America
1967: Martin Luther King, Jr., Conscience for Change
1968: R.D. Laing, The Politics of the Family
1969: George Grant, Time as History
1970: George Wald, Therefore Choose Life
1971: James Corry, The Power of the Law
1972: Pierre Dansereau, Inscape and Landscape
1973: Stafford Beer, Designing Freedom
1974: George Steiner, Nostalgia for the Absolute
1975: J. Tuzo Wilson, Limits to Science
1976: No Lecture
1977: Claude Lévi-Strauss, Myth and Meaning
1978: Leslie Fiedler, The Inadvertent Epic
1979: Jane Jacobs, Canadian Cities and Sovereignty Association
1980: No Lecture
1981: Willy Brandt, Dangers and Options: The Matter of World Survival
1982: Robert Jay Lifton, Indefensible Weapons
1983: Eric Kierans, Globalism and the Nation-State
1984: Carlos Fuentes, Latin America: At War with the Past
1985: Doris Lessing, Prisons We Choose to Live Inside
1986: No Lecture
1987: Gregory Baum, Compassion and Solidarity: The Church for Others
1988: Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies
1989: Ursula Franklin, The Real World of Technology
1990: Richard Lewontin, Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA
1991: Charles Taylor, The Malaise of Modernity
1992: Robert Heilbroner, Twenty-First Century Capitalism
1993: Jean Bethke Elshtain, Democracy on Trial
1994: Conor Cruise O'Brien, On the Eve of the Millennium
1995: John Ralston Saul, The Unconscious Civilization
1996: No Lecture
1997: Hugh Kenner, The Elsewhere Community
1998: Jean Vanier, Becoming Human
1999: Robert Fulford, The Triumph of Narrative
2000: Michael Ignatieff, The Rights Revolution
2001: Janice Stein, The Cult of Efficiency
2002: Margaret Visser, Beyond Fate
2003: Thomas King, The Truth About Stories
2004: Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress
2005: Stephen Lewis, Race Against Time: Searching for Hope in AIDS-Ravaged Africa
2006: Margaret Somerville, The Ethical Imagination
2007: Alberto Manguel, The City of Words
2008: Margaret Atwood, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth
2009: Wade Davis, The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World
2010: Douglas Coupland, Player One: What Is to Become of Us
2011: Adam Gopnik, Winter: Five Windows on the Season
2012: Neil Turok, The Universe Within: From Quantum to Cosmos
2013: Lawrence Hill, Blood: The Stuff of Life
2014: Adrienne Clarkson, Belonging: The Paradox of Citizenship
2015: Margaret MacMillan, History’s People: Personalities and the Past
2016: Jennifer Welsh, The Return of History
2017: Payam Akhavan, In Search of a Better World
2018: Tanya Talaga, All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward
2019: Sally Armstrong, Power Shift: The Longest Revolution
2020: Ronald J. Deibert, Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society
2021: Esi Edugyan, Out of the Sun: On Art, Race and the Future
2022: Tomson Highway, Laughing with the Trickster: On Sex, Death and Accordions
2023: Astra Taylor, The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart