The University of British Columbia won the bid for the 1982 tournament. A letter sent out by Joe Pollender in the fall of 1981, however, cites a 42-day Canadian postal strike as the cause for a change in the program. The second Worlds was moved to the University of Toronto and organized by the undefending champions, Steve Coughlan and Andrew Taylor, when the UBC effort fell apart.
About 40 teams competed, with first place going to Stuart Bugg and David Kidd of the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Stuart Bugg was the best speaker. The dinner hosted by the Royal Commonwealth Society at Casa Loma was a high point of the tournament. In return for such wonderful hospitality, a debate featuring one competitor from each of the six countries represented was presented as after dinner entertainment. Debaters included Andrew Taylor, representing Canada; J.J. Gertler for the United States; Anthony Fisher of Australia; David Kidd from New Zealand and Clark McGinn, the Scot. The best line was from Anthony Fisher: “the Queen is the only person in the world without an accent.” The Royal Commonwealth Society was pleased.
That year, an idea arose that one year’s winners should become the following year’s hosts, as this system had worked so well for the second Worlds. Auckland was duly selected as the site for the 1983 Worlds.
This History of the World Debating Championships comes in 3 parts. From 1976 to 1990 it is taken almost word for word from the 1991 Toronto WUDC Tournament booklet. Who wrote it isn't known but it was provided by Randal Horobik. At the start of the section on Worlds in 1981 is an extract from an e-mail by Clark McGinn, Convenor of Debates, GU Union 1980 -81 and 1981 and Convenor of the First World Debating Competition, 1981. The history since 1991 has been compiled initially by Colm Flynn and edited by many contributors to Wikipedia. Unfortunately Wikipedia deleted the history due to copyright concerns so we are back here. Hopefully anyone who contributed to the Wiki article before it was deleted will be happy to see their work preserved here.
