The Plaunt lectures began in 1958 as a memorial to Alan B. Plaunt, one of the pioneers of Canadian broadcasting. Perhaps more than anyone else, Alan Plaunt saw the CBC as an important source of information and entertainment, serving Canadians in the cause of unity and understanding. The Plaunt lectures present an unusual retrospective of persistent themes in public discourse in Canada: although the last lecture took place in 1992, the subjects treated in the series remain very much in the forefront of the intellectual and public life of this country. Lecturers represented a wide spectrum of interests and fields of expertise, from literature and the arts to issues of national public policy to areas of foreign policy. The breadth of the lectures included in this volume demonstrates the continuity of certain themes in our search to define who and what we were and should be. Contributors include Jacob Viner, F.R. Scott, Jean-Charles Falardeau, Harry Johnson, J.A. Corry, James Eayres, Kenneth Hare, Scott Gordon, Jane Jacobs, Maurice Strong, Mordecai Richler, John Hirsch, Guy Rocher, Charles Taylor, Stanley Roberts, Michael Kirby, John Meisel, Sylvia Ostry, Larkin Kerwin, Peter Lougheed, Mel Hurtig, Allan Gotlieb, Lise Bissonnette, and Bernard Ostry. .