Penguin Canada's Extraordinary Canadians

In Person Big Ideas History

Wednesday

Apr , 2011

7:00pm

Eastern

Christ Church Cathedral

414 Sparks St. • Ottawa

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Penguin Canada's Extraordinary Canadians

How do civilizations imagine themselves? One way is for each of us to look at ourselves through our society's most remarkable figures.

John Ralston Saul

John Ralston Saul hosts the final installment of Penguin Canada’s Extraodinary Canadians Series. Join the conversation with Charles Foran on Maurice Richard, Vincent Lam on Tommy Douglas and André Pratte on Wilfred Laurier.

Due to the French Language Debate, André Pratte, will no longer be able to participate in this event.

The Authors

Charles Foran

Charles Foran is the author of eight previous books, including the novels Carolan's Farewell and House on Fire, and the award-winning non-fiction work The Last House of Ulster. Born and raised in Toronto, he holds degrees from the University of Toronto and University College Dublin, and has taught at universities in China, Hong Kong and Canada. A former resident of Montreal, where he was a columnist for the Montreal Gazette and reported on Quebec for Saturday Night magazine, he currently resides with his family in Peterborough, Ontario. Of his most recent book, the essay collection Join the Revolution, Comrade, one critic wrote: "Foran takes seriously his role as a writer who's alert and engaged with the world" (Quill & Quire). He has made documentaries for CBC Radio and is a contributing reviewer for the Globe and Mail.

John Ralston Saul

John Ralston Saul is Canada’s leading public intellectual. Declared a “prophet” by Time magazine, Saul has received many awards and prizes, including Chile’s Pablo Neruda Medal. He is president of PEN International, an organization dedicated to freedom of expression. He has published fourteen works, which have been translated into twenty-five languages in thirty-six countries, the most recent of which is The Comeback, an examination of the remarkable return to power of Aboriginal people in Canada. Saul lives in Toronto.

Vincent Lam

Vincent Lam’s first book, Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures, won the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and was adapted for television and broadcast on HBO Canada. The Headmaster’s Wager, Dr. Lam’s first novel, was shortlisted for the 2012 Governor General’s Literary Award and the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize. Dr. Lam is also the co-author of The Flu Pandemic and You, a non-fiction guide to influenza pandemics, which received a Special Recognition Award by the American Medical Writers’ Association in 2007. He served as executive editor and co-author of the textbook, Opioid Agonist Therapy: A Prescriber's Guide to Treatment, published in 2022. In 2011, he published a biography of Tommy Douglas, “father of medicare,” for Penguin Canada’s Extraordinary Canadians Series. Dr. Lam is an emergency physician and addictions physician who lives in Toronto. He is the medical director of the Coderix Medical Clinic.