The Massey Lectures is an annual five-part series of lectures given in Canada by distinguished writers, thinkers, and scholars who explore important ideas and issues of contemporary interest. Created in 1961 in honour of Vincent Massey, a former Governor General of Canada and coordinator of the 1951 Massey Report, it is widely regarded as one of the most acclaimed lecture series in the country. Notable Massey lecturers have included Northrop Frye, John Kenneth Galbraith, Noam Chomsky, Jean Vanier, Margaret Atwood, Ursula Franklin, George Steiner, Claude Levi Strauss, and Nobel laureates Martin Luther King Jr., George Wald, Willy Brandt, and Doris Lessing. In 2003, novelist Thomas King was the first person of Cherokee descent to be invited as a lecturer.

Sponsorship

The event is co-sponsored by CBC Radio, House of Anansi Press and Massey College in the University of Toronto. The lectures have been broadcast by the CBC Radio show Ideas since 1965. Prior to 1989, the lectures were recorded for broadcast in a CBC Radio studio in Toronto. From 1989 to 2002, the lectures were delivered before a live audience at the University of Toronto. Since 2002, the lectures have been presented and recorded for broadcast at public events in five different cities across Canada. The lectures are broadcast each November on Ideas and published simultaneously in book form by House of Anansi Press. Many of the lectures can be listened to online on the Ideas website, while others can be purchased on various sites. In addition to the print version for each individual year, several of the earlier lectures are available in compilations, including The Lost Massey Lectures.

Massey lecturers