Wednesday, December 3 2008
Hart House (Great Hall), 7 Hart House Circle
7:30pm
Tickets $12. Limited seating.
For tickets call: (416) 640-5836, buy online or visit the Refund’s desk at 214 College St.

A lecture.

In this startlingly original vision of Canada, thinker John Ralston Saul unveils 3 founding myths. Saul argues that the famous “peace, order, and good government” that supposedly defines Canada is a distortion of the country’s true nature. Every single document before the BNA Act, he points out, used the phrase “peace, welfare, and good government,” demonstrating that the well-being of its citizenry was paramount. He also argues that Canada is a Métis nation, heavily influenced and shaped by aboriginal ideas: egalitarianism, a proper balance between individual and group, and a penchant for negotiation over violence are all aboriginal values that Canada absorbed. Another obstacle to progress, Saul argues, is that Canada has an increasingly ineffective elite, a colonial non-intellectual business elite that doesn’t believe in Canada. It is critical that we recognize these aspects of the country in order to rethink its future.

John Ralston Saul’s philosophical trilogy— Voltaire’s Bastards, The Doubter’s Companion andThe Unconscious Civilization—has had a growing impact on political thought in many countries. The conclusion to this trilogy, On Equilibrium—an exploration of the six qualities of the new humanism—is a persuasive and groundbreaking exploration of the human struggle for personal and social balance.

Mr. Saul has written five novels, including The Birds of Prey and The Field Trilogy. These works deal with the crisis of modern power and its clash with the individual. Like his non-fiction, his novels have been translated into many languages.

He has received many national and international awards for his work. The Unconscious Civilization won the 1996 Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction, as well as the Gordon Montador Award for Best Canadian Book on Social Issues. His reinterpretation of the nature of Canada, Reflections of a Siamese Twin, also won a Montador Award and was chosen by Maclean’s magazine as one of the ten best non-fiction books of the twentieth century. His novel The Paradise Eater won the Premio Lettarario Internazionale in Italy. Most recently he received the Pablo Neruda Medal in celebration of the hundredth anniversary of Neruda’s birth.

Mr. Saul was born in Ottawa and studied at McGill University and the University of London, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1972.

Author photo by Ned Pratt.