TORONTO, March 25, 2014 – York University Chancellor Roy McMurtry will be the featured speaker at the next Canada Speaks lecture on Wednesday, March 26, 2014, with a lecture titled “The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: A detailed recollection of the events leading to the Constitutional Accord of November 1981”.

McMurtry is one of the key players in the long struggle to bring to fruition the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. When he was the Attorney-General for Ontario, he was a member of the Ontario delegation at the constitutional conference in November 1981, which drew up the Charter. Media reports suggested McMurtry, together with Jean Chrétien, who was then Minister of Justice in Pierre Trudeau’s cabinet, and Roy Romanow, who at that point in history was Saskatchewan’s Attorney-General, formed the so-called “Kitchen Cabinet”. The group was responsible for preparing a framework for the Charter, which was approved by the conference.

For his presentation for Canada Speaks, McMurtry will give a first-hand account of the events leading up to this momentous point in Canadian history.

What: York U Chancellor Roy McMurtry lecture: “The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: A detailed recollection of the events leading to the Constitutional Accord of November 1981”

Where: 001 Vanier College (#56 on map)

When: Wednesday, March 26, 1:30 - 2:30pm

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Media Contact: Robin Heron, Media Relations, York University, 416 736 2100 x22097/ rheron@yorku.ca