The annual Vico lecture promotes themes of city-building, urban development, and cultural evolution, and Toronto and its outskirts have been shaped by immigration. The series features speakers whose work address principles related to how immigrant and minority groups have affected the development of the Greater Toronto Area, including via culture, labour, business, and more. The Vico lecture honours the cultural and historic contributions of minority communities to civil society and the development of urban space.
2026 Vico Lecture
The Politics of Protection: Social Democrats and the Immigration Question in Interwar Canada
Date: September 23, 2026
Venue: Senate Chamber, Ross North N940
Type: Hybrid: in-person and Zoom
Speaker: Edward Dunsworth
Immigration posed a difficult question for interwar Canadian socialists. One the one hand, they promoted a universalist vision of a Cooperative Commonwealth; on the other, they wished to protect Canadian workers from foreign competition. This lecture explores how social democrats like J.S. Woodsworth, Agnes Macphail and A.A. Heaps navigated these turbulent waters.
Edward Dunsworth
Edward Dunsworth is a historian of labour, migration and politics, with an interest in studying Canada in a global context. A trio of projects completed between 2022 and 2024 examine the history of migrant farm labour in Canada. His first book, Harvesting Labour: Tobacco and the Global Making of Canada’s Agricultural Workforce (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022) uses Ontario’s tobacco sector as a case study to explore the histories of farm labour and temporary foreign worker programs in Canada. It was awarded the Henry A. Wallace Award by the Agricultural History Society, United States, was a finalist for the Wilson Book Prize (McMaster University) and received an honourable mention for the Canadian Association for Work and Labour Studies’ book prize.
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Why Vico?
The Vico lecture fosters exchange between York University and the wider community, in particular the Italian-Canadian community. The settlement of Italian immigrants fundamentally shaped the nature and development of Toronto and its suburbs over that last 100 years. The Vico lecture’s themes are a nod to these contributions and aim to engage other minority groups, descendants of these groups, and the public in a conversation about space, place, culture, and so much more.
In 2000, Canadian Senator Jerry Grafstein donated two rare Italian volumes of Vico’s works, initially published in 1746, to York University. Senator Grafstein garnered the support of Elvio DelZotto (LLB Osgoode and senior partner of DelZotto, Zorzi), who rallied Italian-Canadian business leaders to fund an annual lecture at York in memory of his law partner Fred Zorzi.
Giambattista Vico (1668-1744) was an Italian philosopher and author. Vico’s writings sought to understand human history and knowledge and are considered the predecessors of many Enlightenment thinkers. He has been referred to as the father of social science and the first modern historian. The Vico Lecture is organized in collaboration with the Mariano A. Elia Chair in Italian-Canadian Studies.