Past Lecturers
Knowlton Nash (1981)
Clark Davey (1982)
William Stevenson (1983)
Charles Lynch (1984)
Joe Schlesinger (1985)
Helen Hutchinson (1986)
Allan Fotheringham (1987)
Ann Medina (1988)
Peter Gzowski (1989)
Patrick Watson (1990)
Eric Malling (1991)
Pamela Wallin (1992)
June Callwood (1993)
Arthur Kent (1994)
Valerie Pringle (1995)
Peter Mansbridge (1996)
Lloyd Robertson (1997)
Rex Murphy (1998)
Adrienne Clarkson (1999)
Wendy Mesley (2000)
Linden MacIntyre (2001)
Haroon Siddiqui (2002)
Alanna Mitchell (2003)
Evan Solomon (2004)
Kevin Newman (2005)
David Halton (2006)
Edward Greenspon (2007)
Carol Off (2008)
Terry Milewski (2009)
Tony Burman (2010)
Anna Maria Tremonti (2011)
Chantal Hebert (2012)|
Wab Kinew (2013)
Nahlah Ayed (2014)
Derek Stoffel (2015)
Doug Cuthand (2016)
Peter Mansbridge (2018)
Connie Walker (2019)
Jana Pruden (2020)
Video Library
Book compilation
Thirty Years of Journalism and Democracy in Canada: The Minifie Lectures 1981-2010
A celebration and recognition of 30 years of Minifie lectures hosted by the School of Journalism. The book contains the complete transcripts of all 30 lectures; ideas and reflections on the state of Canadian journalism from a cross-section of Canadian news journalists.
Order online via URPress!
The James M. Minifie Lecture
In June 1980, the James M. Minifie Fund was set up to help support the School of Journalism at the University of Regina. The fund has provided the school with modern facilities for classes in all aspects of journalism. The fund also supports a free public annual lecture featuring Canada’s most distinguished journalists.
Tax deductible donations to the fund are welcome — for details please contact the Head of the School of Journalism.
We hope to schedule the next Minifie Lecture in fall of 2022. In the meantime, if you weren’t able to join us in 2020, links to read or watch our 2020 lecture are found below.
Jana G. Pruden’s 2020 Minifie Lecture
Pruden is an award-winning feature writer at The Globe and Mail. She is the former crime bureau chief of the Edmonton Journal, and previously worked at the Regina Leader-Post, the Medicine Hat News, the Prairie Post and the Interlake Spectator. She is also a sessional journalism instructor at MacEwan University.
Her writing has also appeared on Longform, Longreads and Byliner, and in magazines such as The Walrus, Reader’s Digest and Sharp. Her story Fear on the Farm was named to Slate’s best crime writing 2013, and appeared in The Best American Sports Writing 2014 as a piece of Notable Sports Writing. In 2019, it was released in book form by Hingston & Olsen Publishing. Follow her @Jana_Pruden
Her 2020 lecture, Give Me Rewrite: Drafting a New Future for Journalism, is available to watch here, or read here.
James M. Minifie
James M. Minifie, one of Canada’s most courageous and illustrious journalists, was born in Burton-on-Trent, England in 1900. His father was a hay and feed dealer who joined the adventurous pioneers then emigrating to Canada in 1909. The family homesteaded at Vanguard, near Swift Current, Saskatchewan.
As a boy, James M. Minifie shared in the sparse comforts and many hardships of early prairie life. His father had led the campaign for the tiny school where young James attended lessons after early morning farm chores. At the age of 16 he talked his way into the army, serving in Europe during the Great War with the Canadian Expeditionary Force.
On his return to Canada at the conclusion of hostilities, he attended Regina College, forerunner of the University of Regina. He went on to the University of Saskatchewan, graduating in 1923; studied at Oriel College at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar; and finished his education at the Sorbonne in Paris.
Minifie’s career as a journalist began in 1929 when he joined the staff of the New York Herald Tribune as a reporter, subsequently becoming their Paris correspondent. During the Spanish Civil War, he was captured by Franco’s forces and returned to Paris when released. Later, he went to Rome to report on Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator.
In the Second World War, Minifie reported the Battle of Britain from London. While watching an air raid during the Blitz, shattered glass from the blast of a German bomb cost him an eye. Transferred to Washington, he joined the Office of Strategic Services and at war’s end was awarded the American Medal of Freedom for his contributions to the Allied cause.
Then began James M. Minifie’s long association with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as their Washington correspondent. For 15 years, first on radio, then on television, he built up a large following of devoted listeners and viewers who waited for the famous, “This is James M. Minifie …”
He wrote several highly regarded books before being overtaken by illness in 1968. Moving to Victoria, B.C., because of poor health, he died in 1974.