Conference 2016
History That Actually Gets Read:
Biographies Beyond Academia
Jointly sponsored by the
Dictionary of Canadian Biography
and the
Department of History, University of Toronto
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Saturday, April 9, 2016
9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Victoria College (VC213), University of Toronto
91 Charles Street, Toronto (near Museum Station)
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Each talk will be 45 minutes long, followed by a 15-minute Q & A session
9:30 a.m. | Opening remarks: Nicholas Terpstra,
Chair, Department of History
9:45 a.m. | The 2016 Donald Creighton Lecture
Donald Wright, “His Macdonald, My Creighton,
Biography and the Writing of History”
10:45 a.m. | Coffee break
11:15 a.m. | Christopher Dummitt, “Weird Willie Mackenzie King,
C P Stacey and the Irreverent Politics of 1970s Canada”
12:15 p.m. | Lunch (make own arrangements)
1:45 p.m. | Stevie Cameron, “The Prime Minister and the Serial Killer”
2:45 p.m. | Coffee break
3:15 p.m. | Ross King, “The Art of History Writing Creative Non-Fiction”
4:15 p.m. | Closing remarks: David Wilson,
General Editor, Dictionary of Canadian Biography
There is no registration fee, and an RSVP is not required.
For inquiries: bret.edwards@utoronto.ca
About the Presenters
DONALD WRIGHT is the author of Donald Creighton: A Life in History (2015). His first book, The Professionalization of History in English Canada (2005) was shortlisted for the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize awarded by the Canadian Historical Association for the best book in Canadian history. He is currently writing a Very Short Introduction to Canada as part of Oxford University Press's Very Short Introduction Series. He lives in Fredericton where he teaches history and political science at the University of New Brunswick.
CHRISTOPHER DUMMITT is Associate Professor in Canadian History in Trent University’s School for the Study of Canada. His forthcoming book with McGill-Queen’s University Press tells the story of how Mackenzie King’s secret life was revealed to Canadians after the former prime minister’s death, and how the rise of an irreverent psychological culture of the self made Canadians more eager to pry into King's secrets. He is also the author of The Manly Modern: Masculinity in the Postwar Years and the editor, with Michael Dawson, of Contesting Clio’s Craft: New Directions and Debates in Canadian History.
STEVIE CAMERON is a UBC graduate who stumbled into a job fair at UBC and ended in Canada’s intelligence service as well as External Affairs. After an unhappy stint at University College London, she taught English at Trent, studied cooking at the Cordon Bleu, taught cooking to adults in Peterborough, Lindsay and Cobourg, and became the food editor at the Toronto Star. She has been an editor at the Ottawa Citizen and the Ottawa Journal, and a columnist and investigative reporter for the Globe and Mail. She also hosted the CBC’s Fifth Estate and worked as a feature writer for Maclean’s. And she has written several books about Ottawa politics — as well as two books about British Columbia’s notorious pig farmer. Four years ago she was appointed to the Order of Canada for her work with the homeless in Toronto and her investigative journalism.
ROSS KING is the author of seven books on Italian, French and Canadian art and history. He has also published two historical novels, Domino (1995) and Ex-Libris (1998), and edited a collection of Leonardo da Vinci's fables, jokes and riddles. He has won the Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction in 2006 (for The Judgment of Paris) and again in 2012 (for Leonardo and The Last Supper). He also won the 2001 BookSense Non-Fiction Book of the Year in the United States for Brunelleschi’s Dome. Born and raised in Canada, he has lived in England since moving to London for post-doctoral studies in 1992.