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CBC Massey Lectures
1971-1980

The CBC has commissioned the annual Massey Lectures since 1961. They were unveiled in late February by the vice-president and general manager of English networks at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), H.G. Walker. "Each year," he said in the press release announcing the series, "the CBC will invite a noted scholar to undertake study or original research in his field and present the results in a series of half-hour radio broadcasts." He continued, saying that he hoped the lectures would "make significant contributions to public awareness and understanding and ... further development of the art of broadcasting."

The lectures were named for Vincent Massey, who had recently completed a seven-year term as Governor General of Canada. Today, the CBC Massey Lectures are the product of a collaboration of three partners -- CBC Radio, the House of Anansi Press, and Massey College in the University of Toronto. For most of their history, the Massey Lectures were recorded within the austere confines of a radio studio in Toronto. But since 2002, they have been delivered each fall before large audiences on university campuses in cities across Canada. The lectures are broadcast each November on CBC Radio One, are streamed worldwide on the internet and are available as podcasts and audio CDs.


Lecturers/Topics:

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