John Hugh MacLennan, internationally acclaimed Canadian author and five-time winner of the Governor General's Award for Fiction, was born in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, March 20, 1907. When he was 7 years old, his family moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia. MacLennan was ten years old and living in Halifax when the Imo and the French munitions ship the Mont Blanc collided in Halifax Harbour on December 6, 1917. The resulting explosion, known as the Halifax Explosion, was the greatest man-made explosion in human history prior to the atomic bomb, and his first published novel, Barometer Rising (1941), chronicles this event. His next novel and probably his most famous work, Two Solitudes (1945), was a best-seller in both Canada and the United States, and in 1946 won him the first of five Governor General's Awards. In 1951 Hugh MacLennan moved to Montreal and joined McGill University's Department of English, where he continued to write and publish, winning his last two Governor General's Awards for his collection of essays Thirty and Three (1954), and the novel The Watch That Ends the Night (1959). Montreal remained his home until he died on November 7, 1990.
The Hugh MacLennan Lecture series was established in 1992 with help of a 5-year grant from the M.E. Hart Foundation, and receives ongoing support from the Friends of the Library. John Metcalf delivered the first lecture in the series on October 21, 1992, in the Stephen Leacock Building.
McGill University's Rare Books and Special Collections is the repository of the Hugh MacLennan papers, which includes correspondence, two unpublished novels, the drafts of Two Solitudes and The Watch that Ends the Night, and many articles. Some of this material is available online through the Hugh MacLennan Virtual Library Project.
The Hugh MacLennan Lecture is sponsored by Donald Walcot.
Upcoming
- Book bans and their impact on Canadian communities, a round table discussion with panelists Michelle Arbuckle (Executive Director of the Ontario Library Association), Brendan de Caires (Executive Director of PEN Canada), and award-winning Canadian author Robin Stevenson on Thursday, April 25, 2024 at 5:30 p.m. Leacock 26 More information and registration.
Past lectures
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Ann-Marie MacDonald in conversation with Professor Erin Hurley (Hybrid Event)
Stories and How They Tell Themselves
April 26, 2023
Watch the lecture
- Rosemary Sullivan in conversation with Anne Lagacé Dowson
"The Betrayal of Anne Frank" and Beyond: The Work and Process of Rosemary Sullivan
May 4, 2022
Watch the lecture - Danny Ramadan in conversation with Ann-Marie MacDonald
Navigating Identity Through Storytelling
April 29, 2021
Watch the lecture - Carol Off
Crossing the Line
October 8, 2020
Watch the lecture - Esi Edugyan in conversation with Amanda Parris
April 29, 2019
Watch the lecture - Louise Penny
Murder for a Living
April 19, 2018
Watch the lecture - Charlotte Gray
A Personal Portrait of Canada at 150
April 27, 2017 - Thomas King
Blue Metropolis First Peoples Literary Prize and interview with the CBC's Rosanna Deerchild
April 15, 2016 - Sarah MacLachlan
“My friend has a manuscript. Will you read it?” & other FAQs
April 28, 2015
Read a review of Sarah MacLachlan's Lecture by Janet Blachford - Michael Ondaatje
Mongrel Art: A discussion of literature and its neighbours
March 26, 2014 - Rabbi Lisa Grushcow
Spiritual Solitudes: Liberal Religion in a Secular Quebec
April 23, 2013 - Charles Foran
City Unique: Montreal in the Life and Imagination of Mordecai Richler
March 20, 2012 - Kate Pullinger
The Future of Fiction: Historical to Digital
April 28, 2011 - The Honourable Ken Dryden
Becoming Canada: Our Story | Our Politics | Our Future
October 14, 2010 - Charlotte Gray
Truth and truthiness in biography
April 23, 2009 - Eleanor Wachtel
The Lives of Writers
April 17, 2008 - Noah Richler
Why Stories Matter... A defence of the arts in the new Canada
April 26, 2007 - Nicole & Émile Martel
Parental translation, a primer –
l’ABC de la traduction parentale:
Nicole and Émile Martel on translating "Life of Pi” to French
September 28 ,2005 - Agnes Whitfield
Two Solitudes: The Paradoxical Destiny of a Canadian Classic
April 7, 2004 - John Metcalf
Something Happened Here
September 30, 2003 - Susan Stromberg-Stein
The Essence of Louis Dudek — from my point of view
October 9, 2002 - Edward O. Phillips
Comedy of Manners
October 9, 2001 - Roch Carrier
The Paper and the Screen
October 10, 2000 - Trevor Ferguson
Imagine That: Imagination as the Language of God
October 6, 1999 - May Ebbitt Cutler
Fear of the Original: A Canadian Phobia
October 1, 1998 - Dr. David Staines
Stephen Leacock: The Man Behind the Humour
October 8, 1997 - Susan Swan
The Writer and Pop Culture
October 3, 1996 - Douglas Gibson
The Book in Canada Today: A Publisher's Perspective
November 7, 1995 - Dr. Victor C. Goldbloom
Hugh MacLennan’s Two Solitudes — Today
September 29, 1994 - Mme Louise Gareau
Hugh MacLennan As I Knew Him
October 13, 1993 - John Metcalf
Inventing Canadian Literature
October 21, 1992