With musical examples and the insight gained in a 40-year career combining the narrative and emotional connections between music and talk, master storyteller and broadcaster Tom Allen brings you on a stirring and inspirational journey to the deepest roots of human communication where melody and meaning become one.

Tom Allen was born in Montreal and went to school there, at Marianapolis College and McGill, before finishing degrees at Boston University and Yale. He worked as a bass trombonist in New York City when there were still places you just didn’t go, then in Toronto and on tour with the Great Lakes Brass. He began working for the CBC on his 30th birthday, a very long time ago, and at the time of writing is still there. He has since written three books, been a Resident Artist with Soulpepper Theatre, delivered storytelling workshops at various University music programs and at the Banff Centre, been named an honourary Doctor of Letters by Thompson Rivers University, hosted countless concerts across the country and written a series of cabaret storytelling shows he calls Chamber Musicals, including From Weimar to Vaudeville, The Missing Pages, A Poe Cabaret, Being Lost and the latest: JS Bach’s Long Walk in the Snow. Tom Allen lives in Toronto with his beloved, the harpist Lori Gemmell, their son, and a very enthusiastic dog.

For much of the 19th century, the Irish were the single largest ethnic group in English-speaking Canada, outnumbering the English, Scots and Welsh combined. This lecture focuses on four aspects of their history: the Famine migration of 1846-51; the Fenian invasions of 1866 and 1870; D’Arcy McGee and Canadian Confederation; and the rise and fall of the Orange Order. In considering each aspect, it challenges traditional images of the Irish in Canada and highlights new research in the field.

David A. Wilson is a Professor in the Celtic Studies Program and History Department at the University of Toronto, and the General Editor of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a winner of the University of Toronto’s Outstanding Teaching Award, he has published and edited numerous books, including a prize-winning two-volume biography of Thomas D’Arcy McGee. His latest book, Canadian Spy Story: Irish Revolutionaries and the Secret Police, was the recipient of the Champlain Society’s Chalmers Award and the C.P. Stacey Prize in Canadian Military History.

In “The Lives of Writers” Eleanor Wachtel will illuminate the relationship between writers, their work and their audience.  She’ll discuss the appetite for literary biography and how greater knowledge of the life of the writer may affect the reader’s appreciation of their work; how writers reveal themselves in their writing; and the self-proclaimed image of the writer as an outsider, on the margins of society.

Eleanor Wachtel earned a reputation as one of the world’s best literary interviewers during her more than 30 years as host of Writers & Company on CBC Radio. Five books of her interviews have been published, including Random Illuminations, a collection of reflections, correspondence and conversations with Carol Shields which won the Independent Publisher Book Award; Original Minds; and most recently, The Best of Writers & Company.  She also co-founded and hosted CBC's Wachtel on the Arts, featuring conversations with filmmakers, composers, architects, artists, etc., as well as the Toronto International Film Festival’s (TIFF) popular Books on Film series for more than a decade.  She has received numerous accolades for her contributions to Canadian cultural life: nine honourary degrees and Officer of the Order of Canada.

Donations at the door or when you watch online are voluntary and only partially cover program costs. If you agree that continuing education is worth the investment, we'd love to […]

Donations at the door or when you watch online are voluntary and only partially cover program costs. If you agree that continuing education is worth the investment, we'd love to […]