Illustrator and cartoonist Maurice Vellekoop will discuss how his award-winning graphic memoir, I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together, is in part a love letter to the author’s hometown. He will take a nostalgic trip into the past, revisiting long-gone Toronto landmarks like Simpsons and Eaton’s department stores, Britnell’s Book Shop, and the University Cinema, reviving the emotions these lost spaces evoke. Vellekoop will also take the city to task for its continued failure to value, much less preserve its own history.
Maurice Vellekoop was born in 1964 in Toronto. Since graduating from OCA in 1986 he’s worked for top international magazine and advertising clients, published numerous zines and comics, created concept and background art for animated films, and his work has been exhibited around the world. His books include Vellevision, A Cocktail of Comics and Pictures, Maurice Vellekoop’s ABC Book: A Homoerotic Primer, and A Nut At The Opera. I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together is his first full-length graphic work. It won the Toronto book Award in 2024.
The Johanna and Leon Katz Memorial Lecture has been generously endowed by the late Johanna Sedlmayer-Katz.