University of Toronto - Torontonensis Yearbook (Toronto, Ontario Canada)

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rw. Y , I r 30' -Q 'la' 1' K m fa ' . Hn' ,i ,QW 1 .,L, fw- . v ,.. er. r . .1 mu rv. WZ .Agia Zhjsm .L .aw- ...Rs ss - lf 'A z via , 7, 4 9' ' O H951 n'..e T.,- I . fi 6 f 'i' . immeasurably. DR. HAROLD A. INNIS M.A., PH.D., D.sc. E.c., F.R.s.c. A SHLE Y is-' CRIPPEN b. Nov. 5, 1894 - d. Nov. 8, 1952. y ehinatinn This volume of Torontonensis is affectionately dedicated to the memory of Dr. Harold A. Innis, esteemed teacher, scholar, author, public servant and University administrator whose outstanding con- tribution has increased the prestige of the University of Toronto

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I ,...,9F-f-W3,-,--,qW,...,-,-.-.- ,----., -Q J uw f' 4 K b iyffqqvc L 4 l 5- - t .M4 J' I j AROLD ADAMS INNIS was born near the village of Otterville, in southwestern Ontario, on November 5, 1894. He was only fifty-eight years old when he died on November 8, 1952. His richly productive career was cut short by tragic ill- ness: but it was long enough for him to Win an inter- national reputation perhaps greater than that of any other Canadian scholar. In Europe as well as in North America, his name brought distinction to the Uni- versity of Toronto. Here he passed his entire aca- demic career, and the staff and students of our uni- versity were the first beneficiaries of his knowledge. his insight, and his wisdom. His career began simply in rural Ontario. His early education entailed all the difficulties and hardships which used to face the son of the farm. From Wood- stock Collegiate Institute he went to McMaster Uni- versity in Toronto: and he had hardly won his bachelor's degree in 1916 when he enlisted as a signaller in the Fourth Battery, Canadian Field Artillery. Before the war ended, he was back in Canada, partly disabled by wounds, but determined to continue his studies and determined also that his chosen field was economics. He was granted his M.A. degree by McMaster University in 1918, and in 19:20 his doctor's degree by the University of Chicago. It was in the latter year that he joined the Department of Political Economy of the University of Toronto as a lecturer in economics, and for the next three decades nobody played a more active part than he in the affairs of his department and in the life of the university as a whole. He was appointed Professor of Political Economy in 1986, and Head of the Depart- ment in 1987, and ten years later he became Dean of the newly organized School of Graduate Studies. Long before this his scholarly publications-the heart of his achievement-had begun. His first book, A History of the Canadian Pa-cific Railway, a re- vised version of his doctoral thesis, appeared in 1928. But it was The Fur Trade in Canada, published seven years later in 1930, which effectively estab- lished his reputation. In it he began a systematic in- vestigation of the Canadian economy in its historical development, and from the fur trade passed on to other basic Canadian staple industries-mines, fisheries, and pulp and paper. All during the 1930,s and 1940's the steady stream of publications-books, articles, lectures, reviews, and prefaces-continued. A complete bibliography would be a lengthy docu- ment, but it will perhaps be generally agreed that his three major works were The Fur Trade in Canada, already mentioned, The Cod Fisheries, the History of an International Economy, which appeared in 1940, and Empire and Communications, the Beit lectures, given at Oxford University, which were published in 1950. These volumes probably repre- sent the peaks of his achievement. They serve also to mark the principal stages in the progressive widen- ing of his outlook. He began as a student of Cana- dian economic history: and his devotion to Canada and his interest in economic phenomena remained unshaken to the end. But the field of his inquiry was steadily enlarged to include political and cultural history, sociology, and political philosophy: and he left the territorial limits of Canada far behind him in his study of international economies and ancient civilizations. In the end the historian of the staple industries of Canada became a social philosopher whose main interest lay in the changing foundations of culture. The distinctive qualities of his 'books and lectures were well known to successive generations of stud- ents at the University of Toronto. His scholarship was a striking combination of painstaking research and imaginative insight. He united a tireless concern for the significant details of any subject with a truly architectonic view of its proportions as a whole..And it was perhaps this combination of revealing par- ticulars and daring generalizations which gave his works and lectures their distinctive quality of intel- lectual excitement. His style was highly condensed, difficult to follow. He made enormous demands upon the mental strength and agility of his readers and listeners, and timid and pedestrian souls were dragged protestingly along behind this imaginative, intuitive intellectual leader. He could illuminate an entire kingdom of scholarship with one of his sudden flashes of insight. He always seemed able to point out, with one of his sweeping gestures, a still more remote intellectual horizon. The range of his scholarly activities extended, of course, beyond the University of Toronto. He was always ready to promote the interests of scholarship both national and international. He took a prominent part in the work of learned societies and academic councils. He was a valued adviser of the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, and of the Carnegie Endowment. And sometimes-as in the Royal Com- mission of Economic Enquiry for Nova Scotia, the Manitoba Royal Commission on Adult Education, and the Dominion Royal Commission on Transporta- tion-he was persuaded to bring his knowledge and wisdom to bear directly upon public and contempo- rary problems. Yet this direct participation in the making of public policy was confined to a few special cases. He was happiest when he was in his own university, surrounded by his colleagues -and stud- ents: and no man ever dedicated himself to the life of scholarship more completely than he, or held a higher view of the part which a university should play in the community. He was jealous of the uni- versity's intellectual independence: he always sought to improve its intellectual standards. And yet, though he held strong convictions and was prepared to fight for them, he never accepted or enforced an ortho- doxy. His ideal was the pursuit of Truth, but never its promulgation as dogma. -D. G. CREIGHTON va .nl 4 -- 4,55 1 , h ' I l

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KARSH OF OTTAWA SIDNEY E. SMITH, QC., M.A., LL.B., D.C.L., F.R.S.C.