The Massey Lectures came to Iqaluit

The CBC Massey Lectures returned this fall, and they came to Iqaluit. 

Iqaluit | Tuesday, October 8

7 p.m.

Inuksuk High School
501 Niaqunngusiariaq
Iqaluit, NU
X0A 0H0

(867) 979-5281

Tickets were free.

There was a free creative writing workshop led by Jamesie Fournier and Ian Williams, held on Tuesday, October 8th, and Thursday, October 10th. 

This year, novelist and poet Ian Williams wanted to start a conversation about conversations. He says we need to address how civic and civil discourse has deteriorated.

"On the civic side, we speak to each other as if we have all become two-dimensional profiles, without history, family, or feelings. On the civil side, our leaders speak to us, goad us, with incendiary rhetoric," Williams said. 

His 2024 Massey Lectures are called What I Mean to Say: Remaking Conversation In Our Time. 

Both serious and playful at the same time, Williams suggests that we need to realize that one-half of our conversations is, in fact, listening.

And aren't the best conversationalists — like the best musicians — good listeners?

Williams argues our differences, whether it be cultures, perspectives or values can no longer be ignored. 

"Silenced people are speaking. Oppressed groups are pressing. Our increased contact with difference is urging us to actively negotiate our relationships to each other and to the space, both physical and ideological, that we share." 

Williams is the author of seven books of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. His novel, Reproduction, won the Scotiabank Giller Prize. He is a professor of English at the University of Toronto, director of the Creative Writing program, and academic advisor for the Massey College William Southam Journalism Fellowship.