50 Years of the Pratt

Feb 26th, 2018

Janet Harron

50 Years of the Pratt

In recognition of the fiftieth anniversary of the Pratt Lecture, George Elliott Clarke will be reconsidering E. J. Pratt’s Towards the Last Spike (1953) and Brébeuf and His Brethren (1940), two presumptive epics that are “weakened by [Pratt’s] essential promulgation of implicit and explicit racialism, which is also reflective of the impossibility of an ethically ‘ethnic,’ Canadian identity.” Read more about the Pratt Lecture in the Gazette.

The day following the Pratt (Friday March 9), Mr Clarke will introduce and host a staged reading of Lennox Brown's The Captive at 8 pm in the Suncor Energy Hall. The Captive is the first play by a an African-Canadian writer to appear in print and this will be the first time this play has been staged.