For the Encouragement of Learning: The Origins of the Canadian Copyright Law

Witness to Yesterday (The Champlain Society Podcast on Canadian History)

In this podcast episode, Simon Nantais talks to Myra Tawfik about her book, For the Encouragement of Learning: The Origins of the Canadian Copyright Law, published by the University of Toronto Press in 2023. For the Encouragement of Learning addresses the contested history of copyright law in Canada, where the economic and reputational interests of authors and the commercial interests of publishers often conflict with the public interest in access to knowledge. It chronicles Canada’s earliest copyright law to explain how pre-Confederation policy-makers understood copyright’s normative purpose. Using government and private archives and copyright registration records, Myra Tawfik demonstrates that the nineteenth-century originators of copyright law intended to promote the advancement of learning in schools by encouraging the mass production of educational material. The book reveals that copyright laws were integral features of British North American education policy and highlights the important roles played by teachers, education reformers, and politicians in the emergence and development of the laws. It also explains how policy-makers began to consider the relationship between copyright and cultural identity formation once British interference into domestic copyright affairs increased, and as Canadian Confederation neared. Myra Tawfik is an expert in intellectual property law, especially copyright law, copyright history and capacity-building in IP literacy for start-ups and entrepreneurs. She is the Don Rodzik Family Chair in Law and Entrepreneurship and a Distinguished University Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Windsor. Image Credit: University Toronto Press If you like our work, please consider supporting it: bit.ly/support_WTY. Your support contributes to the Champlain Society’s mission of opening new windows to directly explore and experience Canada’s past.