The Workers' Educational Association of Canada (WEA) has been a champion of free, public education for adults since its beginning in 1918. In 2002, a WEA staff person came across an interview with Earl Shorris in an old Harper's Magazine (1997). Shorris, who died in 2012, was a social critic and author who founded the U.S.-based Clemente Course in the Humanities. The article was a catalyst for the WEA to reignite its long held belief in the value of a humanities/ liberal arts education for ordinary people, and had had many years delivering such programs.  The Clemente Course reaffirmed the conviction that well-educated people make wise and good citizens and can change society for the better. These are beliefs WEA has shared since its inception. In the summer of 2003 WEA launched University in the Community.

Riches for the Poor, published in 2000, is Shorris’s argument for a humanities education as a we