Once Upon a Time in the West: The Making of the Western Canadian Philosophical Association 1963–2004

Jay Newman is a professor of philosophy at the University of Guelph. His
books include Inauthentic Culture and Its Philosophical Critics and
Biblical Religion and Family Values.

Since 1963, academic philosophers at universities in Western Canada have
met for a weekend every fall at one of the Western Canadian
universities. At these annual colloquia, professors and students have
delivered and absorbed papers, schmoozed at banquets and receptions, and
done sundry things that academics typically do at scholarly conferences.
This volume represents a souvenir of the activities of the Western
Canadian Philosophical Association. Over half the book is devoted to the
programs of the annual colloquia. The book opens with some casual
correspondence concerning the origins and development of the
association; editor Béla Szabados discusses this correspondence and
outlines the association’s accomplishments in an informal 28-page
essay. There are 17 biographical notes on academics active in the
association’s affairs, several photographs, and portraits of the three
most prominent philosophers associated with the organization: Terence
Penelhum, Kai Nielsen, and John King-Farlow.

The correspondence, reflections, and programs included here all attest
to the vitality of academic philosophical discussion in the Western
provinces, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s. While philosophical
discussion in the West has generally tended to be considerably narrower
in scope and method than that in Central Canada, recent colloquia have
included papers on Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and African traditional
religion; and in 1973, Jacques Plamondon of the University of Sherbrooke
delivered an invited lecture on the current state of philosophy in
Quebec. This commemorative volume will be appreciated by those who have
happy memories of the colloquia.

The editor’s speculations about the conception of the Canadian
Journal of Philosophy are wide of the mark. Assisted by a number of
other Ontario philosophers, Helier J. Robinson of the University of
Guelph established the association that conceived, obtained funding for,
and launched the journal; and only after an Ontario philosopher declined
the position of editor was the position then offered to John
King-Farlow, who subsequently enlisted as fellow editors several
colleagues from Alberta universities.