Fisher Video Lectures

John Borrows delivered the inaugural J. Edward Chamberlin Lecture at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library. It was held on October 22, 2024. 

The Chamberlin series engages scholars, knowledge keepers, and creators to present on Indigenous issues, ideas, art, and oral traditions – finding stories beyond the pages of the book. It also highlights the Fisher’s important Indigenous collections, encouraging long-term engagement with a variety of materials preserving history, experience, and memory. 

John Borrows is a Canadian academic and jurist. He is a full Professor of Law and the Loveland Chair in Indigenous Law at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. He is known as a leading authority on Canadian Indigenous law and constitutional law and has been cited by the Supreme Court of Canada.

Dr. Winona Wheeler delivered the 2024 George Kiddell Memorial Lecture. 

The origins of chakipêhikêwina (syllabics) are still debated - did the Reverend James Evans invent Cree syllabics in 1840 or did Evans appropriate it? Was Mêstanaskôwêw (Calling Badger) gifted the spirit language from the Spirit World or was an elaborate mystical story created to claim ownership? Studying the origin stories of syllabics, as well as studying the form - the shapes, and how all the glyphs flow and interrelate - and, how Cree people used their written words, promise deeper insights into the worldviews and rationales that ground these origin stories. Dr. Winona Wheeler is a member of the Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 territory while her family comes from George Gordon First Nation in Treaty 4 territory.

Rebecca Romney, co-founder of the rare book company Type Punch Matrix and co-founder of the Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize, delivered the second Friends of the Fisher lecture of the 2022/23 academic year. Her lecture topic was “Bibliography in the Wild: The Obstacles and Opportunities of Collecting Rare Romance Books.”

The lecture was delivered on Tuesday November 29.

Author Shawn Micallef delivered the George Kiddell Memorial Lecture, titled "Understand Toronto: Trying to Figure Out a Confounding City."

Shawn Micallef is the author of Frontier City: Toronto on the Verge of Greatness, Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto and The Trouble with Brunch: Work, Class and the Pursuit of Leisure. He’s a weekly columnist at the Toronto Star, and a senior editor and co-owner of the independent, Jane Jacobs Prize–winning magazine Spacing. Shawn teaches at the University of Toronto and was a 2011-2012 Canadian Journalism Fellow at Massey College. In 2002, while a resident at the Canadian Film Centre’s Media Lab, he co-founded [murmur], the location-based mobile phone documentary project that spread to over 25 cities globally.

PJ Carefoote, the head of the University of Toronto's Rare Books and Special Collections department, provides an overview of the history of book censorship, with a particular emphasis on materials held at the UofT's Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library.

Toronto artist, painter, and printmaker Charles Pachter delivered the 2019 Johanna and Leon Katz Memorial Lecture where he talked about his work in the book arts, including his many collaborations with Margaret Atwood. The lecture was delivered on Thursday May 9, 2019.

Daniel Wakelin, Jeremy Griffiths Professor of Medieval English Palaeography, University of Oxford, delivered the 2019 George Kiddell Lecture on the History of the Book. Titled ‘The ABC of Medieval English Writing,' the lecture was delivered on March 27, 2019.

James Spyker speaks about his friend Greta Golick, and her importance to the Toronto bookbinding community. Greta's research and notes form the core of the exhibition Uncovering the Book, which runs at the Fisher Library to August 16, 2019.

Canadian artist and wood engraver Wesley Bates delivered the 2018 Alexander C. Pathy Lecture in the Book Arts, the second lecture of the 2018/19 Friends of Fisher lecture series. Bates spoke about his career as an artist and the art of the wood engraver. The lecture was held at the Fisher Library on Wednesday October 10, 2018.

Nick Wilding, Professor of History at Georgia State University, delivered this year's John Seltzer and Mark Seltzer Memorial Lecture on his work detecting Galileo forgeries. Held on Wednesday September 19, 2018, it was the first Friends of Fisher lecture of the 2018/19 season.

On April 23, 2018, the Fisher Library announced that it had acquired the 1481 publication of Cicero's De Amicitia (treatise on friendship) and De Senectute (treatise on old age), printed by William Caxton. This book is now the oldest English-language book held in Canada. Listen to the Fisher's PJ Carefoote discuss both Caxton and the importance of this book being added to the Fisher's collections.

This year's George Kiddell Lecture on the History of the Book was delivered on March 21, 2018, by Dr. Peter Blayney, University of Toronto Department of English, Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Stationers, and authority on the early London Book Trade.

Scott Schofield delivered the 2012 John Seltzer and Mark Seltzer Memorial Lecture on October 1. His talk, "The Forbes Collection: A Library within a Library," focused on the the Fisher Library's Forbes Collection. Schofield is now Assistant Professor, English, at Western's Huron University College in London, Ont.