The Guelph Lecture—On Being Canadian 2018

At the 2018 Guelph Lecture — On Being Canadian, Joseph Heath presented his keynote lecture “The Rise of the Counter-Cultural Right”, which addressed the rise of the alt-right, and the unexpected appropriation by the right of certain radical ideas that originated in the countercultural movements of the 1960s. This insightful presentation was preceded by a performance from the Juno award winning Okavango African Orchestra, which is comprised of eight members from seven different African countries.

As the literary guest, Tanya Talaga began the lecture’s program by reading from her critically-acclaimed book Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City, which honours the lives of seven indigenous youth who died away from home in Northern Ontario, and expands on their deaths to investigate Canada’s long struggle with human rights violations against Indigenous communities.