The Faculty of Arts and the department of political studies at the University of Manitoba is pleased to announce that Dr. Peter Russell will deliver the Eighth Templeton Lecture on Democracy on Thursday, October 15, 2009 at the Provencher Ballroom, Hotel Fort Garry at 8:00 p.m. Russell’s talk will be titled “Our Parliamentary Fundamentals are Not Sound.”

Russell taught political science at the University of Toronto from 1958-1996. He is principal of Senior College at the University of Toronto, past-president of the Canadian Law & Society Association, the Canadian Political Science Association, the Churchill Society for the Advancement of Parliamentary Democracy, the Honorary President of RALUT (Retired Academics and Librarians of the University of Toronto) and the founding President of CURAC (College and University Retiree Associations of Canada).

Russell is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a Fellow and former Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society of Canada. He holds honorary doctorates from a number of Canadian universities and from the Law Society of Upper Canada.

Russell was director of research for the Royal Commission on Certain Activities of the RCMP and chaired the Research Advisory Committee for Canada’s Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. In 1998-99, he served as Canada’s Envoy to the Deh Cho Dene in Canada’s Northwest Territories.

He has published extensively in the fields of judicial, constitutional and aboriginal politics. Among his books are The Judiciary in Canada: The Third Branch of Government, The Future of Social Democracy and Constitutional Odyssey: Can Canadians Become A Sovereign People?, Recognizing Aboriginal Title: The Mabo Case and Indigenous Resistance to English-Settler Colonialism and Two Cheers for Minority Government: The Evolution of Canadian Parliamentary Democracy. His most recent book, co-edited with Lorne Sossin, is Parliamentary Democracy in Crisis, published in 2009 by the University of Toronto Press.

The Templeton Lecture on Democracy is sponsored by the University of Manitoba out of the generosity of Carson Templeton, O.C., LL.D., P. Eng. He was chief engineer of the Greater Winnipeg Dyking Board after the 1950 flood. Thereafter he established a consulting practice, specializing in municipal engineering. In this capacity he attended hundreds of municipal council meetings, and developed a profound respect for democracy at work at the municipal level, a respect which has carried through all of his subsequent endeavours. Templeton died in October 2004. Previous Templeton lecturers were: John Ralston Saul, Jeffrey Simpson, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Benjamin Barber, Michael Ignatieff, Rt. Hon. Beverley McLachlin and Rt. Hon. Joe Clark.

For more information about the Lecture, please contact the department of political studies at: 204-474-9521.