Cory Doctorow at the 2026 Guelph Lecture—On Being

May 8, 2026 in Guelph, Ontario

Images (left to right): Madhur Anand, photo by Ian Willms. Cory Doctorow, photo copyright Julia Galdo and Cody Cloud (JUCO), Creative Commons Attribution. Billianne, photo by Nadia Doss.

Tickets are going fast for this year’s Guelph Lecture—On Being, part of the annual ArtsEverywhere Festival. Our keynote lecture will be presented by author, activist, and journalist Cory Doctorow on the “enshittification” of the internet, and how we in Canada can collectively respond to the decay of civil discourse caused in part by social-media-driven disinformation, greed, and an increasingly policed internet. Prior to the keynote lecture, Governor General Award-winning writer Madhur Anand will present a literary reading of her recent work, and chart-topping Canadian musician Billianne will perform a set of introspective folk-pop. Tickets are still available on the River Run Centre’s website.

Cory Doctorow’s keynote presentation is titled “Elbows Up: How Canada Can Disenshittify Tech, Reclaim Its Sovereignty, & Launch a New Tech Sector.” Thirteen years ago, the US trade rep bullied us into passing IP laws that ban our tech companies from reverse-engineering, modifying, improving, and disenshittifying the tech products they sell to us. America told us that unless we passed these laws, they’d slap us with tariffs.

Welp, here we are: 13 years on, our tech sector is becalmed, RIM and Nortel are distant dreams, US tech giants spy on us unapologetically, they rip off every app maker, performer, seller and news outlet that relies on an app to the tune of 30 cents out of every dollar, they won’t show us the news (not even during wildfires!)…and we’ve got tariffs.

Canada, we can do better than retaliatory tariffs. Changing the law means changing the way our technologists relate to US Big Tech. It means raiding the margins of history’s greatest rent seekers, creating a vast consumer surplus and a durable source of industrial advantage for Canada. It beats the heck of out of voluntarily deciding to pay more for the things we buy from America (which is a pretty weird way of punishing Americans).

In addition to the Guelph Lecture, we’ve got four full days of programming at the ArtsEverywhere Festival from May 7 to 10 in Guelph, Ontario. Join international and local artists, authors, and musicians in exploring the ways that artistic practice can confront the complex crises that we are facing.

Full festival details can be found on our website. The festival places priority on belonging and safety, extending our reach to community partners in their understanding of inclusion and equity. Thank you to our new and returning volunteers, sponsors, donors and community partners for promoting and supporting this important festival for our time.

For updates and future events follow the festival on Facebook and Instagram.

Presented by Musagetes and the Eramosa Institute in partnership with The Bookshelf.

For more information contact: info@musagetes.ca

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