On November 3, professor, former radio host, and award-winning author Minelle Mahtani will deliver the 2026 Harold Innis Lecture, “Erosion: Uncertainty at the End of Stability.”
In this lecture blending memoir, cultural criticism, political reflection, and interview fragments, Minelle Mahtani asks what it means to live in an age of erosion. Beginning with her own experience of illness shortly after the publication of her memoir, May It Have a Happy Ending (2026), Mahtani explores the slow wearing down of bodies, democracies, relationships, language, and public trust in a time shaped by climate catastrophe, institutional exhaustion, digital spectacle, and political fracture. Moving between intimate storytelling and urgent political contemporary questions, Erosion asks: what is being eroded that we are pretending is still intact — and what forms of tenderness, attention, and care are possible, now, in our weathered world?
Associate Professor David Roberts will deliver opening remarks. Professor Sheryl Lightfoot and writer David Chariandy will join Minelle for a discussion and Q&A after the lecture.
Copies of May It Have a Happy Ending will be available for purchase on site courtesy of Another Story Bookshop.
Can’t attend in person but you’re interested in the lecture? Email alumni.innis@utoronto.ca to receive a recording after the event.