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The J.J. Talman Lecture Series
Steven High, Professor of History and Lead Co-Director, Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling, Concordia University
"How Multinational Corporations Have Weaponized Geography Against Trade Unions Since the 1960s: Ontario in Global Economic and Political Perspective"
Tuesday, March 2, 2027
Time & Location TBD
Our 2026-2027 Speaker
Professor Steven High, Concordia University
Steven High is a professor of history and lead co-director of Concordia’s Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling. For the past six years, High has been leading the transnational “Deindustrialization and the Politics of Our Time” (website- deindustrialization.org) research project which is examining the long-term political consequences of the deindustrialization of huge swathes of North America and Europe. He has published many books and articles on this subject, most recently The Left in Power: Bob Rae’s NDP and the Working Class (UTP, 2025), as well as on oral history more generally. His research has been awarded numerous prizes, including the Governor General History Prize for Popular Media (the Pierre Berton Award) and the J.B. Tyrrell Historical Medal from the Royal Society of Canada. He is currently a 2026-29 Trudeau Fellow.
As we once again face the painful process of radical restructuring in the Canadian economy, this time prompted by Donald Trump’s tariff war and his bellicose threats of annexation, it is important to consider how Canadians responded to previous waves of economic displacement and social dislocation. Trade unionists have long understood the “inherent tendency of capital to gravitate towards areas where trade unions are weak or non-existent.” Capital flight, once largely contained within nation-states, was geographically freed to move across national borders by trade liberalization. Management’s control over geography became the most important weapon in its arsenal against trade unions and the activist state. What we are seeing today, at least in part, is a populist backlash against neoliberal globalization.
About the J.J. Talman Lecture Series
Presented by the Department of History and Western Libraries
The J.J. Talman Lecture Series focuses on Ontario history, Ontario regional collections and innovative uses thereof, or previously unstudied aspects of Canadian history.
Reflecting the breadth of Dr. Talman’s career at Western, as a respected historian and Chief Librarian, the lectures are organized annually by a joint committee comprised of representatives from the Department of History and Western Libraries.
The J.J. Talman Lecture Series was envisioned and is funded by Raj Jain, Librarian Emerita, and her brother, Dr. Sushil Jain, in gratitude for Dr. Talman’s many personal kindnesses, and to recognize his substantial contribution to Western.
Past Talman Lectures
| Year | Lecturer | Lecture Title |
| 2025 | Kristina Llewellyn | Developing Our Historical Consciousness to Confront Polarized Politics in Ontario Today |
| 2024 | Lori Chambers | Legal Story-Telling: Case Files and the Historian |
| 2023 | Kevin Spooner | Canada's Peacekeeping History: Symbols, Contradictions, and Hard Truths |
| 2022 | Linda Mahood | The Legend of the Wawa Hitchhiker: Youth Mobility in the Hippie Generation |
| 2020 | David Koffman | Unsettling Ethnic History: Jewish Indigenous Encounters in Canada |
| 2019 | Barrington Walker | The Honourable Leonard Braithwaite: The Imprint of a Black Canadian Legal Pioneer on the History of Modern Ontario |
| 2017 | Constance Backhouse | Viola Desmond: Her Historic Challenge to Race Segregation in Canada and Her Appearance on Our $10 Note |
| 2015 | Jane Errington | 'A burthen to the community'? J.B. Hawke and Managing Migration to Upper Canada |
| 2013 | Alan Taylor | Settling and Unsettling Borders: Continental Legacies of the War of 1812. |
| 2012 | Cecilia Morgan | "Among the Six Nations": Celia B File and the Politics of Writing Memory, History and Home in Southern Ontario, 1920s-1960s |
| 2011 | Tim Cook | Ghosts from the Trenches: Stories of the Supernatural and the Uncanny among Canada's Great War Trench Soldiers |
| 2009 | Carl Benn | Mohawks in the Sudan War, 1884-85 |
| 2008 | Peter Neary | From War to Peace: Canada in the 1940s |
Accessibility
Please contact us at history-inquiries@uwo.ca if you require information in an alternate format, or if any other arrangements can make this event accessible to you. For a campus accessibility map please visit: http://www.accessibility.uwo.ca/resources/maps/index.html.