A standing-room only crowd of more than 300 jammed into the Winnipeg Art Gallery auditorium in February to hear John Ralston Saul deliver the inaugural Templeton Lecture on Democracy. Ralston Saul, acclaimed as a novelist, essayist and thinker in Canada and internationally, reassesses and challenges many important notions and assumptions Canadians have about their country in his 1997 book, Reflections of a Siamese Twin: Canada at the End of the Twentieth Century. His previous book, The Unconscious Civilization, was broadcast on the CBC as the 1995 Massey Lectures and in 1996 received the Governor-General's Award for the best non-fiction book of the year.
The Templeton Lecture on Democracy was established at the university out
of the generosity of Carson Templeton, O.C., LLD., P.Eng. He was the chief
engineer of the Greater Winnipeg Dyking Board after the 1950 flood.
Thereafter he established a consulting practice, specializing in municipal
engineering, and in this capacity attended hundreds of municipal council
meetings over the years. He developed a profound respect for democracy at
work at the municipal level, and so founded the lecture series in 1997
with the aim of examining political systems in Canada and elsewhere to
perhaps shed light on the prospects of change in Canadian democracy.
