The History and Impact of the New Left in Toronto

In this podcast episode, Greg Marchildon interviews Ian McKay on his co-authored book Radical Ambition: The New Left in Toronto published by Between the Lines Press in 2019. Co-authored with Peter Graham, Radical Ambition won the Floyd S. Chalmers Award in Ontario History, an award that is administered by the Champlain Society. Influenced by protests against the Vietnam War in the United States and other countries in the 1960s and early 1970s, the New Left in Canada was shaped by three main identity-based movements of antiracism, feminism, and gay-lesbian rights. Toronto was ground zero for the New Left, where its main thinkers, lifestyles and public confrontations took place. For many years Ian McKay was a professor of history at Queen’s University. He now holds an endowed Chair in Canadian History at McMaster University where he heads up the L.R. Wilson Institute of Canadian History, one of the sponsors of the Witness to Yesterday podcast series. If you like our work, please consider supporting it: https://bit.ly/support_WTY. Your support contributes to the Champlain Society’s mission of opening new windows to directly explore and experience Canada’s past.