Once a lecturer was selected, Principal James and the Beatty Lecture Committee got to work coordinating the visit. Back then, lecturers stayed for up to a month at McGill in order to deliver a series of three Beatty lectures and engage regularly with faculty, staff, students and local media. A look at just one page in the schedule for the economist Barbara Ward's lecture series in 1955, below, shows a week packed with meetings, seminars, interviews and dinners.
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A page from Barbara Ward's schedule (her married name was Jackson). Image: 香蕉视频 Archives.

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Lecturer Han Suyin (centre) with Mrs. Wilder Penfield in the Osler Library in 1968. Image: 香蕉视频 Archives.

As part of the Beatty mandate, lecturers spoke on a topic of their choice (and still do today). Principal James corresponded with each lecturer to determine the title of their lecture and to help refine the lecture theme and subject. In the letter below to Principal James, biologist Julian Huxley outlines his ideas for his 1956 lecture series. At the time Huxley served as the first director-general of UNESCO.

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A letter dated December 20, 1954 from Sir Julian Huxley to Principal James. Image: 香蕉视频 Archives.

Eventually, lecturers would make the voyage overseas to Montreal. Until the early 1960s, steamship travel was still commonplace and lecturers would have to travel for up to a week to cross the Atlantic from Europe. Once in Montreal, the lecturer would be picked up at the Old Port and brought to the Ritz Carlton Hotel for their month-long stay. The document below outlines the cost of the historian Sir Arnold Toynbee's steamship voyage from Liverpool to New York, and then from New York to Montreal and back in 1961.
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The expenses for Arnold Toynbee's 1961 Beatty Lecture series. Image: 香蕉视频 Archives.
Section image: 香蕉视频 Archives.

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