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J.B. Tyrrell Historical Medal
- 2006 - Henry Vivian Nelles
- 2004 - Chad Gaffield
- 2002 - David J. Bercuson
- 2000 - Joy Parr, FRSC
- 1998 - Jean-Claude Robert, MSRC
- 1996 - Yves Roby, MSRC
- 1994 - Cornelius J. Jaenen, FRSC
- 1992 - Jack L. Granatstein, FRSC
- 1990 - Hubert Charbonneau, MSRC et Jacques Légaré
- 1988 - J. Michael Bliss, FRSC
- 1986 - John W. Holmes, FRSC
- 1984 - Carl Berger, FRSC
- 1982 - Jean-Pierre Wallot, MSRC
- 1979 - W.J. Eccles
- 1975 - George Ramsay Cook, FRSC
- 1972 - Jean Hamelin, FRSC
- 1970 - Fernand Ouellet, FRSC
- 1968 - Gerald William L. Nicholson
- 1966 - Edgar McInnis
- 1965 - W. Kaye Lamb, FRSC
- 1964 - Marcel Trudel
- 1963 - Frank H. Underhill, FRSC
- 1962 - James Maurice S. Careless, FRSC
- 1961 - Guy Frégault
- 1960 - Samuel Delbert Clark, FRSC
- 1959 - Arthur Maheux
- 1958 - William Lewis Morton, FRSC
- 1957 - George F.G. Stanley, FRSC
- 1956 - Olivier Maurault, MSRC
- 1955 - Charles Perry Stacey, FRSC
- 1954 - G.P. de T. Glazebrook
- 1953 - Séraphin Marion, MSRC
- 1952 - Charles Bruce Sissons, FRSC
- 1951 - Jean Bruchési, MSRC
- 1951 - Donald Grant Creighton, FRSC
- 1950 - John Bartlet Brebner
- 1949 - Reginald G. Trotter, FRSC
- 1948 - Lionel Groulx, MSRC
- 1947 - Arthur R.M. Lower, FRSC
- 1946 - A. LeRoy Burt
- 1945 - Fred Landon, FRSC
- 1944 - Harold Adam Innis, FRSC
- 1943 - Gustave Lanctot, MSRC
- 1942 - D.C. Harvey, FRSC
- 1941 - Arthur S. Morton, FRSC
- 1940 - Chester Martin, FRSC
- 1939 - E.-Z. Massicotte, MSRC
- 1938 - William Wood, FRSC
- 1937 - M. Aegidius Fauteux, MSRC
- 1936 - W. Stewart Wallace, FRSC
- 1935 - Ernest Alexander Cruikshank, FRSC
- 1934 - John Clarence Webster, FRSC
- 1933 - Frederick W. Howay, FRSC
- 1932 - Pierre-Georges Roy, FRSC
- 1931 - Lawrence J. Burpee, FRSC
- 1930 - Adam Shortt, FRSC
- 1929 - George Mackinnon Wrong, FRSC
- 1928 - Thomas Chapais, FRSC
Top of Page2006 - Henry Vivian Nelles
Department of History, McMaster University
Professor Nelles is one of only a handful of historians of Canada who is acclaimed both at home and abroad, and for good reason. His extensive scholarship is characterized by systematic research, elegant writing and, above all, by his imaginative reconstruction of the Canadian past. Professor Nelles' Distinguished Research Professorship at York University attests to his deserved reputation as a brilliant practitioner of the craft of history.
2004 - Chad Gaffield
Today, computer technology is familiar in historical scholarship across the country, and has become a critical tool for profound conceptual and methodological rethinking of the history of Canada. At each stage of this remarkable transformation, Chad Gaffield, Professor, Department of History, University of Ottawa, has played a key role. By introducing new concepts such as “automated archivist” and by promoting a collaboration of “machines and minds”, Professor Gaffield has, in a unique manner, been at the forefront of the scholarly development of computer-based applications. His latest success is as Principal Investigator for the Canada Century Research Infrastructure project, one of the largest projects ever funded for historical research in Canada. This project exemplifies all the distinctive elements of his innovative leadership: active engagement in both the anglophone and francophone communities; interdisciplinary participation; and pan-Canadian and international collaboration. As a consequence, Chad Gaffield is one of the most well-known and highly-respected scholars across the social sciences and humanities in Canada. With his pioneering conceptual and methodological work, as well as his award-winning studies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Gaffield has made, and continues to make, outstanding contributions to the furthering of knowledge of Canadian history.
2002 - David J. Bercuson
Every generation, three or four Canadian historians distinguish themselves from their colleagues by the sustained high quality of their scholarship. Not so many years ago the list of names would include Innis, Lower, Creighton, Brebner, Stacey and Stanley--and others besides. These scholars were read not only by other historians but by men and women in other disciplines. In many instances they were read by Canadians in all walks of life. Moreover, their scholarship has endured. David Jay Bercuson, Professor, Department of History, The University of Calgary, is a worthy companion of these outstanding historians of an earlier day. Over the past quarter century Bercuson has made major and important contributions to several fields of Canadian history--labour history, diplomatic and political history, regional history, biography, and military history. He has supervised the graduate training of nearly twenty younger scholars and has served as a dean of graduate studies. He has been active in the Canadian Historical Association and other professional organizations; he has served as editor of the Canadian Historical Review. Bercuson's scholarship has been supported over the years by major research grants, including a Killam Fellowship. At the same time, through his journalism and other popular writings, Bercuson may well be the most widely known historian in the country. The combination of outstanding scholarship, extensive participation in the historical profession in Canada, and the ability to write in a manner that makes his work accessible to the educated general public as well as to specialists, is rare. Bercuson's record over the past twenty-five years indicates a major achievement.
2000 - Joy Parr, FRSC
Parr, FRSC, Simon Fraser University A much-published scholar in the field of Canadian social history, Joy Parr is one of the finest historians of her generation. Her work on immigrant children and the gendered structures of work in industrializing Canada have broken new ground and won widespread recognition. The recipient of a host of awards and prizes, she holds the Canadian Historical Association's Sir John A. Macdonald Prize and Garneau Prize (the latter for the best book in history published by a Canadian between 1989 and 1994) for The Gender of Breadwinners, and has twice (1987 and 1995) been awarded the CHA's Hilda Neatby Prize. One of only a few Canadian historians to draw international attention, she is the recipient of both the Berkshire Prize (1988) for the best article in history published in the United States by a woman and the Abbot Payson Usher Prize for the best article published in Technology and Culture between 1996 and 1999. In recognition of her achievements, she has received an honorary degree from the University of Windsor (1997), held distinguished visiting professor positions at the State University of New York and Guelph, and has been a visiting fellow at Oxford (1996-97), Uppsala, and Radcliffe. In 1999 she served as William Lyon Mackenzie King professor at Harvard University. Currently the Nancy and Jack Farley Professor at Simon Fraser University, she is at the height of her academic career, having recently produced two monographs on issues relating to technology and domestic work.
1998 - Jean-Claude Robert, MSRC
Citation available in French only.
1996 - Yves Roby, MSRC
Citation available in French only.
1994 - Cornelius J. Jaenen, FRSC
For over 30 years, Cornelius Jaenen, a professor at the University of Ottawa, has earned the praise of his peers for his high standards of quality, the wide variety and diversity of his interests and his unceasing contributions to his field. Through books, book chapters and articles, he has contributed to the understanding of the forces and events that shaped multiculturalism in this country. His books Friend or Foe and Les relations franco-amérindiennes en Nouvelle-France established him as the authority on relations between aboriginal people and Europeans before the 20th Century. His works and professional activities have also distinguished him as an expert in history of the church in Canada (The Role of the Church in New France) and as a leader in Canadian Ethnic studies.
1992 - Jack L. Granatstein, FRSC
Professor J.L. Granatstein is without doubt one of the leading historians of modern Canada. In his area of special interest, the political, diplomatic and military history of Canada, he has few peers. His list of books and articles dealing with these and other historical topics is extensive and has won him an enviable reputation both in Canada and internationally. He is known for his resourcefulness in searching out documentation, for his clear and often provocative interpretation of the past, and for his ability to write in a prose style that is attractive to both specialists and general readers. Such works as Canada's War: The Politics of the Mackenzie King Government, 1939-45 (1975), The Ottawa Men: The Civil Service Mandarins, 1935-57 (1982), and Pirouette: Pierre Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy (1990) have become standard works of contemporary Canadian historiography. They forcefully demonstrate Professor Granatstein's mastery of the historian's craft.
1990 - Hubert Charbonneau, MSRC et Jacques Légaré
Citation available in French only.
1988 - J. Michael Bliss, FRSC
Professor Bliss's contributions to Canadian historical scholarship fall into two categories. Northern Enterprise (1987), A Living Profit (1974) and A Canadian Millionaire (1978) examined business culture in its broadest sense; and in The Discovery of Insulin (1982) and Banting (1984) he reconstructed an exceptionally complex inner history of the research and the conflicts of personalities that led to a cure for diabetes. His Canadian Millionaire received the two highest awards of the Canadian Historical Association and his insulin study received similar recognition abroad.
1986 - John W. Holmes, FRSC
John W. Holmes, diplomat and scholar, has made a highly significant contribution to knowledge of the development of Canada through his work with the Canadian Institute of International Affairs as Director General and in a long list of articles and books on the history of international relations. That contribution has been crowned in three volumes published in the 1980s which have been acclaimed as masterly expositions in their field. Life with Uncle, based on his Bissell Lectures at the University of Toronto in 1980-81, analyzes Canada's uneasy relationship with the United States. The two substantial volumes of The Shaping of Peace: Canada and the Search for World Order 1943-1957 take account of Canada's role on the world stage during very significant years. These three works have been widely praised for their scholarship, for the highly skilful use made of the author's personal experience in diplomacy for interpretation of events, and for the style and wit that make the wealth of information a pleasure to acquire. He has provided in a bravura performance what have been recognized as indispensable guides to the history of Canada's foreign policy.
1984 - Carl Berger, FRSC
Carl Berger has made an original contribution to our understanding of the Canadian past. Almost single handedly he has opened up and illuminated the intellectual history of modern Canada. His three books and numerous articles have led to a profound revision of several significant themes in Canadian history. In The Sense of Power (1970), he offered a new and convincing explanation of the views of those late nineteenth-century publicists and educators whose Canadian nationalism was rooted in strong convictions about the superiority of British traditions and institutions. In The Writing of Canadian History (1976), he set out for the first time in a systematic fashion the principal preoccupations of Canadian historians in the twentieth century. This acclaimed work received the Governor-General's Award for Non-Fiction. Most recently in Science, God and Nature in Victorian Canada (1983), he turned his talents to the examination of the history of natural history in nineteenth-century Canada. All of his publications are characterized by painstaking research, imaginative interpretation, detachment, a lucid and distinctive literary style. Carl Berger has established himself firmly as an innovative scholar and a leading Canadian historian of his generation.
1982 - Jean-Pierre Wallot, MSRC
Citation available in French only.
1979 - W.J. Eccles
The work of W.J. Eccles, almost wholly concentrated upon Canada in the French regime, is of a remarkable quality, at once refreshing, vigorous, and thoughtful. His Frontenac (1959) broke new ground, and won him a prize from the American Historical Association. He has followed that book with two others, each in their way small masterpieces, The Canadian Frontier, 1534-1760 (1969) and France in America (1972), the latter winning him the Institut Français de Washington Chinard award. Of the three books, The Canadian Frontier is perhaps the most brilliant, breaking with the Protestant, Anglo-Saxon view of French Canadian history begun by Parkman and instead putting forward a strong, sympathetic account of the history and institutions of New France. He has written about a broad range of subjects, and his assessments of the fur trade, or the role of the Indians in the trading system, or the aristocratic, 'non-commercial' ethos of the colony, or New France as a 'welfare state' are so penetrating and convincing that no one is likely to see these matters in quite the same way again. And although it is perhaps a little idyllic, one cannot fail to be impressed with this burnished, shining portrait that wears so easily its freshness and verisimilitude. He is a most deserving winner of the Tyrrell Medal.
1975 - George Ramsay Cook, FRSC
The medal that commemorates the name of Joseph Burr Tyrrell, the eminent explorer, geologist, engineer, and Fellow of this Society who died in his hundredth year in 1957, is awarded, so our Calendar informs us, "for outstanding work in the history of Canada." This year it goes to Dr. George Ramsay Cook.
Ramsay Cook is well known to the Canadian public of either language for his penetrating and incisive commentaries, via radio, television, and the public press, on many topics of national interest and importance. Of greater consequence, however, for our present scholarly company are the quantity, the variety, and above all the quality of his academic writings, all of them devoted to the history of this country and all of them of exceptional significance.
A graduate of Manitoba, Queen's, and Toronto, Dr. Cook is the author of five books and the editor of as many more; and over almost a score of years a steady stream of authoritative articles from his pen has also been appearing in the learned periodicals not only of this country but also of the USA and the UK, the latest of them ("Landscape Painting and National Sentiment in Canada") being of singular relevance for the theme under scrutiny at this year's meeting of the Royal Society of Canada.
I am sure, Mr. President, that it is a matter of the deepest satisfaction to you, as it is to all of us, that Dr. Cook's work is no less appreciated in the francophone than in the anglophone parts of our nation. Indeed two of his books, Canada and the French-Canadian Question and The Maple Leaf Forever, have made his name virtually synonymous with the study and analysis of modern French-Canadian history and culture.
His most recent book, A Nation Transformed, which he wrote in cooperation with Craig Brown and which synthesizes the new insights and novel interpretations that he has brought to Canadian studies, came off the press just last year and it serves as some measure of the very notable contribution that he has made to scholarship. It is no exaggeration to say that his fresh way of looking at the two generations that followed Confederation has caused all of us to modify whatever views and ideas we previously held of Canadian life and politics. No historian of post-1867 Canada will ever be able henceforth to ignore what Ramsay Cook has so plausibly and so engagingly presented.
1972 - Jean Hamelin, FRSC
Jean Hamelin, aged 41, elected this year to the Society, has been awarded the Tyrrell Medal for his outstanding work in Canadian history. Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Arts from 1969 to 1971, he has since been Head of the History Department at Laval University. Having obtained his Licence in history at Laval he presented his doctoral thesis "Économie et Société en Nouvelle France" at the École Pratique des Hautes Études de Paris. Since then he has been following two paths: he has published reference works to fill the void so difficult for researchers, and he has continued his own research in socio-economic history. Among many others, his Histoire économique du québec 1851-1896, produced in association with Yves Roby, will join the collection of great works of French-Canadian historiography. During all this time he has managed to guide teams of young researchers and students, which surround him, on works concerning Quebec labour.
1970 - Fernand Ouellet, FRSC
Professor Ouellet is already a distinguished historian. I need only mention the Prix David, the highest honour awarded to a French Canadian author, and his position as president of the Canadian Historical Association, the accolade of his fellow historians.
Such marks of professional distinction, however, are almost misleading. In a profession marked by its respect for traditions, Professor Ouellet has been an innovator. He has gone to the past -- to the period between the Conquest and Confederation -- but he has gone to sources long buried beneath archival dust: parish records, notarial archives, shipping statistics. From the unpromising data he has produced an analysis of French Canadian society which challenges orthodox views and contradicts hallowed interpretations. His contribution to Canadian historiography goes even further because historians specializing in other periods have paid him the highest compliment by turning to similar sources in their own research. Professor Ouellet is thus one of those rare scholars who has challenged the traditional methodology of his discipline and yet has won the respect and esteem of his colleagues. It is my privilege to present the Tyrrell Medal to Dr. Fernand Ouellet.
1968 - Gerald William L. Nicholson
I have the honour to present to you for the Tyrrell Medal in history Colonel Gerald William Lingen Nicholson, C.D., B.A., B.Paed., former director of the historical section of the General Staff, Ottawa.
Born at Weston-Super-Mare, Somerset, England, Colonel Nicholson emigrated to Canada at the age of seventeen, and three years later began a twenty-year stint of school-teaching in Saskatchewan. After two years in the Battleford and Prince Albert Volunteers and a year (1942-43) in the Canadian Active Service Force, the man and his destiny met in 1943 when he joined the Historical Section of the Canadian General Staff, rising to Deputy Director in 1946-59 and to Director in 1959-61.
The past quarter-century, 1943-68, has witnessed a monumental record of publications from his pen. A sighting shot was his Marlborough and the War of the Spanish Succession (1955), an astute analysis of the tactics of the Duke in his various battles, superbly suited for study at a staff college. Next came The Canadians in Italy (1956), being Volume II of the Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War and a worthy contribution to the great three-volume series master-minded by Colonel Charles P. Stacey. In 1962, he went back to an earlier period to publish a magistral history of The Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914-1919. The lapse of over forty years since the close of World War I made it feasible for him to open up the political records of those fateful years. One dramatic example was the decision of the then Prime Minister, Sir Robert Borden, apparently without consulting even his own cabinet, to announce impulsively in a New Year's message in 1916 that Canada's armed forces would be doubled to 500,000 men in uniform, which turned out to mean not merely an additional 250,000 men but a still further increment of 300,000 recruits per annum to maintain the new establishment. Hinc illae lacrimae.
The year 1964 saw him shift his attention to Canada's newest province and oldest settlement in The Fighting Newfoundlander: A History of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment. This unit he traces through an earlier incarnation in 1803-16 and at much greater length in its gallant and tragic record in World War I, as, for example, at Beaumont Hamel, on the Somme, where they went into action 801 strong and only 91 came back.
In 1967, Colonel Nicholson brought out the first volume of The Gunners of Canada: A History of the Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery. This instalment gave the record from 1534 to 1919. A second volume is being mobilized for early publication.
As one who has produced massive narratives of great distinction dealing with the military annals of his adopted country, Colonel Nicholson is presented to you, Mr. President, for the Tyrrell Medal.
1966 - Edgar McInnis
I present to you Edgar Wardwell McInnis, distinguished scholar and administrator. Born on "The Island," at Charlottetown, he attended Prince of Wales College, then proceeded to the University of Toronto, and after being named Rhodes Scholar in 1923, pursued further studies at Oxford University. At Oxford his winning of the Newdigate Prize for poetry enhanced his putative reputation as historian. He returned to this continent to teach briefly at Oberlin College, and then to serve for twenty-four years as a member of the History Department of the University of Toronto. At Toronto, Edgar McInnis belonged to that band of historians who remoulded the writing of Canadian history by emphasizing new themes. For his part, he chose to examine the stresses and the strains that developed as Canada advanced along the road to nationhood and as it was called upon to assume new responsibilities as a continental and a world power. The Unguarded Frontier, a study of Canadian-American relations, won the Governor General's Award in 1943; a second book, North America and the Modern World, won a further award in 1945. During the war he produced his History of World War II in six volumes; later he collaborated with F. H. Soward in writing Canada and the United Nations, 1956. The Atlantic Triangle and the Cold War appeared in 1959 and in 1960 he contributed an essay to the volume published by Hugh Keenleyside and others on The Growth of Canadian Politics in External Affairs. His textbook, Canada, a Political and Social History, first published in 1947, remains a favourite with university instructors and is still used by students as a standard reference work in Canadian History.
Tired, he claimed, of marking undergraduate essays, McInnis left the classroom in 1952 to become President of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs. In this role he worked energetically to deepen the Canadian perspective: he served as a member of the Canadian delegation to the Seventh United Nations General Assembly in 1952; he contributed articles on international affairs to various Canadian periodicals; and he expanded the educational work of the Institute. When, in 1960, York University was searching for an historian with breadth of experience and breadth of outlook, it selected him to be Professor of History, Chairman of the Department, and Dean of Graduate Studies.
As historian, Edgar McInnis is very much the product of his times - of the era when his country groped its way towards new international stature and measured its tread as it assumed a new international role. To him, tenacity of purpose and patient compromise constitute the essential drama of the Canadian story. If Canada is of, though not entirely in the world, this in itself is a singular achievement and one that represents progress. And if that achievement has been characterized by restraint and moderation, there should be the same values in the recounting of that story. By comprehensively and painstakingly detailing the difficulties overcome at each stage in Canada's developing maturity he has helped to explain Canadian values to others. The fact that his worth has been recognized outside his own country is reflected in the honorary degree awarded him by Dartmouth College. It is now time that his worth as historian be recognized at home. I am now proud to present him to you as recipient of this Society's highest award for history, the J. B. Tyrrell Medal.
1965 - W. Kaye Lamb, FRSC
It is self-evident that Kaye Lamb has served the history of Canada in a most fundamental way. As Dominion Archivist, he has had in his devoted care the greatest single historical resource in this country. The wisdom, efficiency, and enterprise with which he has directed the Public Archives of Canada, constantly enlarging its holdings and making them readily accessible, has earned him the enduring gratitude of every Canadian historian. Yet it should no less be evident that Dr. Lamb has served the cause of Canada's history in a variety of other capacities as well: among them, as National Librarian, as editor and author, and as past President of the Canadian Historical Association and of the Champlain Society.
Educated at the Universities of British Columbia, Paris, and London--where he earned his doctorate in history - he has never, despite his wide experience, lost his love for his native British Columbia. Indeed, he served its history particularly as archivist and librarian of the province, and as editor of the British Columbia Historical Quarterly, before moving in 1948 to the Archives in Ottawa from the post he then occupied as librarian of the University of British Columbia. His continued enthusiasm for British Columbian history is well displayed by the two volumes he recently produced for the Macmillan "Pioneer Books" Series, on the journals of Daniel Harmon and the letters and journals of Simon Fraser.
This personal interest, however, has never restricted his awareness of the whole of Canada's development, and his concern for other fields of Canadian history. Thus he was Chief Editorial Consultant in the preparation of the Encyclopedia Canadiana during the 1950's, while, as President of the Champlain Society from 1953 to 1964, he did a great deal to shape a broader policy of publication, which has borne valuable fruit in the numerous and varied historical documentary volumes published by the Society in recent years.
A leading public servant in the Government of Canada, a key figure in the development of its record management policy--vitally linked with the research and writings of university scholars and students, intimately related to the world of Canadian libraries - it is no exaggeration to say that Kaye Lamb has held a commanding position in the realm of history in this country. It is in recognition of that position, and his manifold achievements in it, that we pay this tribute tonight.
1964 - Marcel Trudel
(Bilingual Citation) The Tyrrell Medallist for 1964 is a French Canadian scholar of the highest distinction who is known primarily as a scientific chronicler and interpreter of eighteenth-century Canada, and particularly the Canada of the early days of the British régime.
Marcel Trudel is a son of the Quebec countryside, born in the village of St. Narcisse de Champlain in the valley of the Batiscan. From the Séminaire des Trois Rivières he went to Laval University, where he obtained the degree of Docteur ès Lettres for a thesis entitled "L'Influence de Voltaire au Canada." He has remained at Laval since that time, becoming Director of the University's Institut d'Histoire in 1955. His affection for his native district is strongly reflected in his writings. He is the author of a novel laid in his own village, and of a historical study of the period of military government in the Trois Rivières area. But his scholarly net has been cast more widely in Louis XVI, le congrès américain et le Canada (1949), in his monumental study L'Église canadienne sous le Régime militaire (1956-57) and in L'Esclavage au Canada français (1960). In 1963 he published the first volume of his Histoire de la Nouvelle France. This year he is President of the Canadian Historical Association.
Marcel Trudel is above all a scientific historian. He has written: "Il est étrange qu'un historien en soit réduit à s'excuser d'avoir accumulé des références et une nomenclature bibliographique: l'histoire, au Canadafrançais, est toujours confortablement assise dans la chaire de rhétorique et regarde de bien haut l'historien-chercheur qui veut être scientifique. La première s'appuie sur de belles phrases, ce dernier s'appuie sur des sources et c'est lui, malgré tout, qui pourra atteindre plus sûrement la vérité historique."
It is a pleasure to present to you, sir, for the award of the Tyrrell Medal, a tireless seeker after the truth of Canadian history, Dr. Marcel Trudel.
1963 - Frank H. Underhill, FRSC
Frank Underhill's true claim of right to the Tyrrell Medal is less that he has written history in Canada than that he has taught it; less that he has added to its wealth of detail than that he has penetrated its whole meaning; less than he has filled up pages of print - though he has filled many - than that he has fostered ideas, and people with ideas, to stir the flaccid mind of Canada.
He was born, he has said, a North York Presbyterian Grit. He was educated at Toronto in classics, English, and history, and then re-educated at Oxford in politics, Fabianism, and controversy. He served in France in the First World War, and began his teaching career at Saskatchewan, amid the yeasty democracy of Western progressivism, before taking up his long residence in the Department of History at the University of Toronto. Whatever the relative responsibilities of native capacity and conditioning circumstances may have been, it is clear that out of this background, education, and experience came one of the most stimulating and significant men of learning in a generation of Canadians. He has combined a rooted belief in North American freedom with a high regard for the intellectual values of British liberalism, keen-minded aspirations towards socialism with a constant qualifying concern for the individual in the community. His writings have bristle and sheen at once; his teaching has always been an enjoyment of wit and amiably off-hand delivery - but its compelling clarity and brilliant critical analysis have left unforgettable impressions.
Through writing and teaching Frank Underhill has also contributed most markedly and specifically to our understanding of Canadian Liberalism: from the days of the original Clear Grits through Edward Blake, long a special object of his affection, to Mackenzie King, the special object, perhaps, of a love-hate relationship. Beyond this, his broader interest in the workings of politicians and parties in this country has added no less markedly to our knowledge of the Canadian political process.
His written contributions have been made in the form of essays and published lectures rather than in major monographs, but one should mention particularly the volume In Search of Canadian Liberalism, a collection drawn from among his best writings, which won the Governor General's Award in 1961. One might mention, as well, that he has also managed to fill in time writing copiously for the Canadian Forum, in helping to found the C.C.F. and draft its basic programme, and, in more recent years of supposed semi-retirement, in serving on the Senate of Carleton University, acting as Curator of Laurier House, appearing on radio and television, and writing series of articles for the press.
Above all, however, Frank Underhill deserves citation for the Tyrrell Medal because his work has been in the best sense inspirational. By his habit of mind, his intense commitment, and his intellectual energy, he has inspired history and historians in Canada - scholars, public men, citizens, in varied activities of life. He might be called, with incomplete truth, a letter-day Goldwin Smith or a Canadian Bernard Shaw - but the fact that so many Canadians of so many opinions, in so many fields, would recognize him fully and warmly just as "F.H.U." is all the claim that he needs to merit this acknowledgment today.
1962 - James Maurice S. Careless, FRSC
I have the honour to present to you for the Tyrrell Medal, Dr. James Maurice Stockford Careless, Professor and Chairman of the Department of History at the University of Toronto.
Professor J. M. S. Careless is a son of Toronto, educated in the University of Toronto Schools and the University of Toronto itself. During the Second World War he worked for a time in the historical branch of Naval Service Headquarters at Ottawa, but subsequently transferred to the Department of External Affairs, in which he served as Canadian Diplomatic Officer aboard the exchange ship Gripsholm. He had already undertaken a course of graduate study at Harvard, and after the war he completed this, returning thereafter to teach in his own university's Department of History. He was appointed Chairman of the Department in 1959.
Dr. Careless has been identified in a special manner with the study of the history of his native province. A generation of Toronto graduate students has enjoyed and profited by his course on the History of Old Ontario. As Vice-Chairman of the provincial Archaeological and Historic Sites Board he has played a leading part in the task of making the people of Ontario more aware of their community's past; and in 1959 he was President of the Ontario Historical Society.
His contributions to history, however, have ranged far beyond provincial boundaries. In a succession of important articles beginning in 1948 he illuminated various aspects of Canadian historical experience, chiefly with reference to the Victorian age. In 1953 he published Canada: A Story of Challenge, a succinct and penetrating summary whose quality was recognized by a Governor-General's Award. In 1959 the work of many years came to fruition with the publication of The Voice of Upper Canada, the first volume of a definitive biography of George Brown entitled Brown of the Globe. Based in part upon previously unknown correspondence discovered by Mr. Careless himself in Scotland, the book gave new dimensions to a Canadian journalist, statesman, and patriot too often dismissed as a mere puritanical foil for another political character. The second and concluding volume is now awaited, with all the more interest for the foretaste the author has given us in a delightful paper entitled "George Brown and the Mother of Confederation."
The Terms of Award of the Tyrrell Medal require not merely that the recipient be a historian with significant works already to his credit, but also that he be one who may be expected to continue to make important contributions to the history of Canada. It is a pleasure to present to you, Sir, an ideal Tyrrell Medallist, a distinguished scholar in the prime of achievement: James Maurice Stockford Careless.
1961 - Guy Frégault
Citation available in French only.
1960 - Samuel Delbert Clark, FRSC
I have the honour to present for the Tyrrell Medal Dr. Samuel Delbert Clark, Professor of Sociology in the University of Toronto.
A pupil of A. S. Morton and MacGregor Dawson in History and Politics at Saskatchewan, Clark moved into Economic History at Toronto and the London School of Economics, into Sociology under Carl Dawson at McGill, and finally took his Ph.D. in the Department of Political Economy at Toronto with a study of the Canadian Manufacturers Association. Strongly influenced by Harold Innis, he put his historical skill and insight into the service of sociology. Three books: The Social Development of Canada, Church and Sect in Canada, and Movements of Political Protest in Canada, 1640-1840, together with other articles, already testify to his scholarly achievement. For ten years he served as an editor of the Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science. His Presidential Address to the Canadian Political Science Association a year ago was a plea for the discontinuance of "the kind of distinction now made between history and sociology." He then felt confident that his old history teachers at the University of Saskatchewan would not consider him to "have been an unfaithful pupil." That he should be receiving this medal today is a proof that the historians have not thought him "unfaithful."
1959 - Arthur Maheux
Citation available in French only.
1958 - William Lewis Morton, FRSC
I have the honour to present to you for the Tyrrell Medal William Lewis Morton, professor of Canadian History in the University of Manitoba.
Professor Morton may be taken as in a special sense an intellectual representative of his native province of Manitoba. Last year, when he published his history of the province— Manitoba: A History— he dedicated it "To My Mother and Father, Manitobans, and My Children, Manitobans." He was born in the province, received his early education in its schools and university, and, after a period as Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, he came back to history in the University of Manitoba, where he held junior positions in John's College, United College, and Brandon College before settling in the History Department of the University itself, of which he has been Chairman since 1950. His historical writing has been centred mainly upon his native province. And in this field he has produced a body of work which is distinguished for the high quality of its research scholarship, for the skill of the author in bringing out the philosophical implications of the political or academic issues with which he has had to deal, and for the spirit of loving sympathy in which he broods over his community, its successes and its failures.
I select for citation, as justifying the award of the Tyrrell Medal, four historical volumes centring about this theme of Manitoba: The Progressive Party in Canada (1950), the first volume to be published in the series Social Credit in Alberta, its background and development; Alexander Begg's Red River Journal and Other Papers Relative to the Red River Resistance of 1869-1870 (1956), a volume edited for the Champlain Society with an introduction by Professor Morton which is an acute and subtle analysis of the events of 1869-70 that led to the creation of the province of Manitoba; One University: A History of the University of Manitoba, 1877-1952 (1957); and Manitoba: A History (1957).
All of these volumes deal with highly controversial subjects. As Professor Morton has said himself in his history of the province, Manitoba is a truly plural society, and it is here that the Canadian experiment in political bi-nationalism and cultural plurality is at its most intense. His analysis of these various controversies is notable for the clarity with which it presents the various conflicting points of view and for its shrewdness and general fairness of judgment. In his study of the Progressive party, with its internal struggles between "Manitobans" and "Albertans," he has given us enlightening insights into the working of party politics in Canada. His history of the province is remarkably successful in weaving together the story of agricultural settlement, of the mingling of ethnic stocks and cultures, and of the intricate interplay between provincial and federal politics. My own local Ontario prejudices lead me to feel that he has perhaps been unduly severe upon the defects of the qualities of the Ontario Grit farmer settlers who upset the arrangements of 1870; and my effete eastern Canadian cynicism causes me to smile at the frequent revelations of the somewhat bitter sorrow of the Manitoba historian that his province never realized its more imperial ambitions of becoming a major power like Ontario and Quebec. But the Morton body of work on Manitoba stands out as a model for the kind of work that, for the most part, still needs doing in the other provinces, and makes him one of our leading Canadian historians.
1957 - George F.G. Stanley, FRSC
I have the honour to present to you, to receive the Tyrrell Medal, Dr. George Francis Gilman Stanley.
Dr. Stanley was born in Calgary in 1907, graduated from the University of Alberta, and was appointed Rhodes Scholar from the province. He studied at Keble College, Oxford, and received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from Oxford University.
During the Second World War Dr. Stanley served as Deputy Director of the Historical Section of the General Staff, and he retired from the Army with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.
He has taught at Mount Allison University, and the University of British Columbia, and is now Head of the Department of History at the Royal Military College, Kingston.
His first book was published in 1936: The Birth of Western Canada: The Story of the Riel Rebellions. Since the war he has published numerous articles and two further volumes: Canada's Soldiers: The Military History of an Unmilitary People, and a collection of the letters of John Henry Lefroy. In 1948 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for study in Canadian history, and in 1955 he was elected President of the Canadian Historical Association. A short essay on Louis Riel, written for the Association's "Historical Booklet" series, is to be followed shortly by a full-scale biography.
As the titles of his books indicate, Dr. Stanley's research has been chiefly in the fields of military history, and the history of the Canadian West. In both he has done distinguished work, but perhaps his most valuable contribution has been a better understanding of the clash of French, Indian and Anglo-Saxon cultures that occurred in earlier days in the prairie region.
Mr. President, I am happy to present Dr. Stanley to receive the Tyrrell Medal.
1956 - Olivier Maurault, MSRC
Citation available in French only.
1955 - Charles Perry Stacey, FRSC
I have the honour to present to you for the Tyrrell Medal, Colonel Charles Perry Stacey, Director of the Historical Section of the Canadian General Staff. Colonel Stacey was born at Toronto in 1906. He was graduated from the University of Toronto as Bachelor of Arts in 1927 and received the same degree from the University of Oxford in 1929. In 1931 he became a Master of Arts of Princeton University. In 1937 he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from that institution. Subsequently he joined the Princeton staff in the Department of History where he remained until the advent of World War II.
Mr. Stacey early interested himself in military affairs, joining the non-permanent active militia in 1924. He went on the reserve of officers when going to the United States in 1929, and remained in that status until 1940, when he was appointed Historical Officer at Canadian Military Headquarters in London. He held this position until the close of the war. In recognition of his services he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. Colonel Stacey has also received the Canadian Forces Decoration.
His most important published works are: Canada and the British Army, 1846-71 (1936); The Military Problems of Canada (1940); Canada's Battle in Normandy (1946); and The Canadian Army 1939-45 (1948). The last volume received the Governor-General's award in non-fiction for that year.
In 1951 Dr. Stacey was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He has also been honoured by his confrères by being chosen president of the Canadian Historical Association for 1952-3. As the historian of the Canadian Army, the importance of Colonel Stacey's work speaks for itself. Mr. President, I commend to you Charles Perry Stacey as a most worthy recipient of the Tyrrell Medal.
1954 - G.P. de T. Glazebrook
I have the honour to present for the Tyrrell Medal, Mr. G. de T. Glazebrook of the Canadian Department of External Affairs.
Mr. Glazebrook was born at London, Ontario, in 1900. He attended Upper Canada College, and was graduated B.A. from the University of Toronto in 1922, and M.A., Oxford, in 1924. From 1925 to 1941 and from 1946 to 1948, he held an appointment in History at the University of Toronto; and from 1942 to 1946 he acted as Special Wartime Assistant in the Department of External Affairs. In 1948 he returned to that Department, and is at present attached to the Canadian Embassy at Washington, D.C. He has been a member of the editorial board of the Canadian Historical Review, and in 1948 was Editor for the Champlain Society.
The most important published works of Mr. Glazebrook are the following:
· Sir Charles Bagot in Canada, 1929
· Sir Edward Walker, 1933
· The Hargrave Correspondence, 1938
· A History of Transportation in Canada, 1938
· Canadian External Relations, 1942
· Canada at the Paris Peace Conference, 1942
· A History of Canadian External Relations, 1950
· A Short History of Canada, 1950
In addition to this impressive list of books, Mr. Glazebrook has published many individual articles and chapters in collaborative works.
In several directions Mr. Glazebrook has broken new ground. His early History of Transportation in Canada is an example of this pioneer spirit, and the History of Canadian External Relations is the only satisfactory work on the subject. His Short History of Canada is not without rivals in the field, but it is a sane and distinguished piece of work, an interpretation of Canada for Canadians.
Mr. Glazebrook's writing is notable for its smooth flow and happy phrasing in a field where these qualities are by no means usual. He writes in an even, judicious temper; and his work, especially on the subject of Canadian external relations, is unlikely to be surpassed for many years to come.
It is regrettable that, in the absence of the Canadian ambassador from Washington, Mr. Glazebrook is unable to be present. May I assure you, Mr. President, that in granting the Tyrrell Medal to Mr. Glazebrook, the Royal Society of Canada does honour to itself.
1953 - Séraphin Marion, MSRC
Citation available in French only.
1952 - Charles Bruce Sissons, FRSC
Charles Bruce Sissons was born at Crown Hill, Ontario, on September 4, 1879. His paternal grandfather had moved there from Yorkshire, England, in 1831, and with the help of his sons had carved out, from the dense Canadian forest, a farm from which a family of thirteen in all was fed and clothed. His maternal great-great-grandfather crossed the Niagara River from the United States about 1790, doubtless with the Quakers who began to come north at that time, for that was the year in which Reuben Burr, a Quaker, one of my great-grandfathers, crossed at Niagara, on his way from New Jersey to Canada.
In 1901 Professor Sissons graduated in Classics from the University of Toronto and then spent several years as a teacher in the schools of Ontario and British Columbia. After doing post-graduate work in Oxford for a year, he returned to Canada in 1909 and for forty years taught Ancient History in his old college, Victoria College, in the University of Toronto. While there he had the good fortune to find in its Archives an immense mass of letters, correspondence, and other literary material from and to Egerton Ryerson, and with wisdom, perseverance, and sagacity he began reading it, then making extracts, and finally he produced two large volumes on the life of this forceful and wonderful man, who throughout his life, from 1802 to 1882, exercised a most potent influence on the growth and healthy development of Canadian education and civilization. This work has already taken its place as one of the most notable productions of Canadian historical scholarship of our day. It is distinguished not only for the fullness with which it treats the career of Ryerson, as a leader from the 1820's to the 1870's in religion, education, and politics, but also for the literary skill with which the author lets Ryerson tell his own story, through his letters and state papers, and also for the insight which it gives into the part played by nineteenth-century Methodism in the building up of twentieth-century Ontario. Students of history look forward eagerly to the history of Victoria College, upon which Professor Sissons is at present engaged.
Thank you, Mr. President, for extending to me the privilege of presenting to Professor C. B. Sissons this great and learned Society's Historical Medal. The Committee of Historical and Literary Scholars, chosen by the Society from among its members and forming the highest historical tribunal in Canada, recommended that this medal be awarded to him for his story of the wonderful life and achievements of Egerton Ryerson, one of the great men of Canada. Dr. Sissons, on behalf of the President and Executive of the Royal Society of Canada, I have much pleasure in handing you this, the Historical Medal of the Society. It was designed by the late C. W. Jeffreys, one of our greatest medallists, his instructions being that nothing should be drawn on it but what could be seen in Canada. After the design was completed Emanuel Hahn, the sculptor, executed the models, which were sent to the Royal Mint at London, England, to have the stamps and dies made, and these have since been used when the medal is struck annually in Ottawa.
1951 - Jean Bruchési, MSRC
Citation available in French only.
1951 - Donald Grant Creighton, FRSC
It is an honour and pleasure to present to you for the award of the Tyrrell Medal, Donald Grant Creighton. A native of Toronto, a distinguished graduate of the University of Toronto and of Oxford, Mr. Creighton is Professor of History in the University of Toronto.
It is the contribution of his generation of historians to have righted the balance in this country between the older constitutional and political history and the newer economic and social history and to have achieved a new and significant synthesis. In this achievement, he has a notable share.
It is the particular personal contribution of Mr. Creighton that by his sound research, his creative imagination, and his graceful and forceful prose he has made the development of Canada a chapter in history absorbing and significant in itself and full of meaning for the understanding of our contemporary world. The Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence, his report on British North America at Confederation, and Dominion of the North are books which will always hold a distinguished place in any library of Canadian history and many of the interpretations set forth in them have already become part of the common stock of Canadian thought.
1950 - John Bartlet Brebner
It is my privilege to present to this audience Dr. John Bartlet Brebner, to whom has been awarded the Tyrrell Medal for 1950. If Dr. Brebner, le médaillé, he who receives the medal, on this glorious day of June, 1950, were French, I would speak in French, but he is a pure Englishman, and therefore I ask the audience to accept my English.
Dr. Brebner was born in Toronto, May 12, 1895, the son of James Brebner and Frances Elizabeth Bartlet. Of course, Dr. Brebner studied in Toronto, at Wellesley Public School and at the provincial Model School; he then entered the University of Toronto, and studied under Edward Blake. He received a B.A. from Oxford in 1920, a doctorate in Philosophy from Columbia University in 1927, and a doctorate in Letters from Brown University in 1944.
Since 1942, Dr. Brebner has been Professor of History at Columbia University. He has held other appointments, as lecturer in the Nova Scotia Summer School in 1932 and 1947; as lecturer in Modern History, University of Toronto, 1921-5. He served in the First World War as cadet and lieutenant. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and has been an editor of the Canadian Historical Review.
Dr. Brebner is the author of New England's Outpost, 1927; The Explorers of North America, 1492-1806, 1933; The Neutral Yankees of Nova Scotia, 1937; North Atlantic Triangle, 1945; Scholarship for Canada, 1945; and, with Allan Nevins, of The Making of Modern Britain, 1943.
For all these books - some of them excellent - and for his splendid work in the field of history, we believe Dr. Brebner well deserves the crown of the Tyrrell Medal.
1949 - Reginald G. Trotter, FRSC
Reginald George Trotter is the Douglas Professor of Canadian and Colonial History at Queen's University. He is the head of the Department of History. A frequent and distinguished contributor to historical studies in Canada, he is a Fellow of this Society and a former President of the Canadian Historical Association.
Professor Trotter was born in Woodstock, Ontario, in 1888. His is the second generation of university service, for his father before him was President of Acadia University. Professor Trotter was educated at Acadia, Yale, and Harvard, from which latter university he received his Doctorate of Philosophy in 1921. His major teaching appointments have been at Leland Stanford University and, since 1924, at Queen's.
Professor Trotter has written extensively on Canadian history. His articles have been numerous and among his books, his Canadian Federation: Its Origin and Achievement has become a standard work. His other works include Canadian History: A Syllabus and Guide to Reading; The British Empire and Commonwealth; North America and the War; Commonwealth, Pattern for Peace; Charters of our Freedom.
Professor Trotter's services to Canadian history consist not only in his writing and teaching, but in his successful efforts to further the organization of historical studies and of international efforts at understanding. Thus for several years he conducted the unique summer school which Queen's University held at the Public Archives of Canada in Ottawa. He was the Canadian organizer of the four conferences on Canadian-American affairs held alternately at St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York, and at Queen's. The Proceedings of these conferences, and still more the meetings themselves, mark a definite point in the evolution of Canadian-American relations; they foreshadowed (and probably influenced) the policies of Mr. King and Mr. Roosevelt, as embodied in their speeches and more especially in the Ogdensburg agreement.
Professor Trotter was also one of the organizers of the Canadian Social Science Research Institute. He was its chairman in 1940-1. Every worker in the Social Sciences and most of those in the Humanities in Canada are cognizant of the place in Canadian studies of this strategic body.
As a teacher, writer, organizer, Professor Trotter is outstanding among Canadian historians. As guide and friend, he is known to them all.
1948 - Lionel Groulx, MSRC
Citation available in French only.
1947 - Arthur R.M. Lower, FRSC
I have the honour to present to you Professor Arthur R. M. Lower as the recipient of the Tyrrell Medal for 1947.
Professor Lower has come to maturity as a scholar through many years of study, both in Canadian history and in the general field of history. Beginning with interests of a literary character, he was early attracted to economic studies under the stimulating influence of Professor Adam Shortt. In this field he has made outstanding contributions to our knowledge and understanding of the influence of the forests and their associated industries upon our material economic development.
But Professor Lower has also ranged widely over the political and social aspects of our history and these he has constantly endeavoured to relate to the larger world about us, conscious of the fact that neither man nor nation exists in a vacuum. Discussion of international affairs has, therefore, been prominent in his teaching and in his writings, and he has gone beyond the study and the classroom to associate himself actively with those organizations which are seeking to promote better understanding, and through better understanding a greater measure of good will among the nations.
His most recent and in some respects his most important contribution to scholarship is a general history of Canada, bearing the title Colony to Nation. Here he has presented in fine literary form, for the general reader as well as for the student, the mature conclusions of his many years of study in this field. Apart from school texts there have been few attempts to produce a full-length history of this country's development, and it is a pleasure to note that the excellence of the work, both as history and as literature, has already been recognized. Its author has been awarded the Governor-General's Medal for 1947 in the field of academic non-fiction and has also received the annual prize of the Imperial Order, Daughters of the Empire.
Professor Lower is a graduate of the University of Toronto and of Harvard University. He has been for many years the Head of the Department of History and Political Science in United College, University of Manitoba, and has this year been called to the Department of History of Queen's University. He is a Past President of the Canadian Historical Association and has associated actively with various Canadian organizations interested in Canadian development, in education, and in international affairs. His numerous contributions to journals and his several books mark him as one of our most productive scholars in his field.
Mr. President, I have great personal pleasure in presenting Professor Lower to you for this award.
1946 - A. LeRoy Burt
I am presenting to you a man who, though still not old, has long been known to many generations of students in Canada and the United States as a gifted, enthusiastic teacher of history, and to the reading public as a versatile writer on historical subjects and contemporary problems. He began teaching in 1913; and his first book, Imperial Architects, a prize essay, written in Oxford, was published in the same year.
While a member of the Department of History in the University of Alberta, he conducted an informal discussion club in his own home, which stimulated much interest in current and historical books and problems; and, through the Extension Department of the University, he lectured all over Alberta on Canadian and international problems. At the same time, he published text-books on civics, Canadian history, and the League of Nations, as well as several articles in the Canadian Historical Review and other reputable periodicals, in which he laid the foundations and foreshadowed the conclusions of more definitive studies in Canadian History and Canadian-American Relations.
Since 1930, when he joined the history staff of the University of Minnesota, these preliminary and later studies have borne fruit in three volumes on Canadian history: The Old Province of Quebec, 1933, The Romance of Canada, 1937, A History of Canada for Americans, 1942; and in another volume in the "Canadian-American Relations" series, The United States, Great Britain and British North America, 1940.
Though all these later volumes give evidence of laborious days spent in dry-as-dust research, the dry bones are so covered with flesh and blood and the theses are elaborated with such enthusiasm that the reader imbibes old ideas without dust and accepts new ideas without pain; for Professor Burt is an historian who works hard but sings at his work.
Mr. President, I have the honour ex-officio and the keenest pleasure personally to present Professor A. LeRoy Burt of the University of Minnesota as the recipient of the Tyrrell Medal for 1946.
1945 - Fred Landon, FRSC
I have a very considerable sympathy with those who feel that good history, like well-placed charity, begins at home, and I am even willing to be crucified as parochially minded for saying this. How shall a man love God whom he hath not seen if he love not his brother whom he hath seen? And how shall a man comprehend history in the large who has never concerned himself with its workings right under his nose? Yet, for all the logic of that query, men are not honoured, as a usual thing, for having observed and recorded history rather sub genio loci than sub specie mundiali.
I am presenting you, however, this evening to be the recipient of one of our Society's chief distinctions a colleague from Section II, who is judged by those working with him in the field of history to have made a unique contribution to the cause of local history in Ontario by a long series of papers and articles in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, the Canadian Historical Review, and elsewhere. And to this personal contribution effected through brochures of his own he has made a remarkable addition by assembling in the Library of the University of Western Ontario an extremely valuable collection of source material, much of it rescued in the very nick of time from that species of destruction which attends so easily on detached documents and papers.
I would not, however, wish it inferred that the gentleman I am presenting has been willing to confine himself purely to earning and amassing the small change in which history circulates locally. We find as a matter of fact that he has employed his large store of special knowledge acquired from the conning of hundreds of particular items to evolve such works in book form as Western Ontario and the American Frontier, which appeared four years since in the Carnegie series on "Canadian-American Relations," and the study entitled Lake Huron in the well-known "Great Lakes" series. Of this latter book the reviewers, ordinarily a contentious tribe, agree substantially in saying that the author has in it combined the accuracy of the professional historian with the vision of the artist and lover of nature in describing the vast inland sea and its bearing on human affairs along its shores.
The confidence of his fellows in him has been demonstrated by the fact that he has been president of the London and Middlesex Historical Society, the Ontario Historical Society, and the Canadian Historical Society, truly a tergeminus honor, while within the Royal Society itself he served as president of Section II in the year 1940-1.
Mr. President, it is not simply in the performance of a routine which falls to me ex-officio but with a sense of the keenest personal pleasure that I present to you as the designated recipient of the Tyrrell Medal for the year 1945, Fred Landon, Librarian of the University of Western Ontario.
1944 - Harold Adam Innis, FRSC
I ask permission to present for the Tyrrell Medal, to be awarded by this Society, Professor Harold Adams Innis, Head of the Department of Political Economy in the University of Toronto. Professor Innis was born in the countryside of Ontario, and received his early education there. He proceeded to McMaster University, from which he graduated with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in the year 1916. The same year he enlisted in the Canadian Field Artillery and proceeded overseas. He served his country abroad during 1916 and 1917 and was wounded at Vimy Ridge in the latter year. Returning to Canada he resumed his education, receiving the degree of Master of Arts in 1918. He then began his studies at the University of Chicago and in 1920 was awarded from that institution the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The same year he received an appointment as lecturer in the Department of Political Economy in the University of Toronto and in that institution the remainder of his academic career to date has been spent, he having risen through all the ranks of the professoriate until now he is head of his department.
But Professor Innis has done much more than follow a conventional and successful academic career. He has founded a school of economic and historical thought whose influence has gone out far and wide within Canada and which will for many years to come affect our national modes of thinking and acting. He has written much, edited more, and taken an active share in many undertakings of an executive type.
For his calling as an economic historian Professor Innis prepared himself with all the earnestness of the Calvinistic strain from which he descends. Beginning in 1924 he made a series of voyages throughout the lesser known and more remote parts of the country, whose object was to enable him to see and understand it as a whole. Thus in 1924, he went down the Mackenzie River to its mouth and up some of its tributaries. In 1926, he descended the Yukon River. In 1920, he went to Churchill and further north on Hudson Bay to Chesterfield Inlet. In 1930, he visited Newfoundland and the Labrador and in 1931 the north shore of the St. Lawrence. These experiences in themselves admirably fitted him for the receipt of the Tyrrell Medal but for Professor Innis they were but aspects of his study, contributions to his knowledge of how this country is put together.
This knowledge was to reflect itself in his books. First of all came the History of the Canadian Pacific Railway (1923), then the celebrated Fur Trade in Canada (1926), a minor classic in the problems it solves and the hypotheses as to the nature of Canada that it sets up. In 1929 and 1933 there appeared the Select Documents in Canadian Economic History, in 1933 the Problems of Staple Production in Canada and later on the Biography of Peter Pond, the Settlement and the Mining Frontier and the second great study of a staple trade in The Cod Fisheries.
In addition to these many books, Professor Innis has edited diaries and books of essays and lectures and has written editorial prefaces to many works. He has contributed innumerable articles to periodicals, ranging from severe economic treatments to what in these latter days might be termed semi-philosophical discussions of tempora nostra.
Professor Innis has represented the academic world of his country abroad, having attended the International Geographical Congress in Cambridge, England, in 1928 and the International Studies Conference in London in 1933. In 1934, he made his appearance in official life, becoming a member of the Royal Commission of Economic Inquiry, Nova Scotia. Characteristically, his contribution to this inquiry consisted in a minority report that may well be remembered after the majority report is forgotten. It was in this same year that he became a member of the Royal Society of Canada. In 1938 he was President of the Canadian Political Science Association, and, in 1943, President of Section II of this Society. He is at present President of the Economic History Association of America.
Few men in Canadian academic life have had at the early age of fifty so distinguished and so full a career. His students all revere him, his colleagues all respect him, and his friends all love him. As one who has seen that career develop, as an old friend and humble admirer, I have much pleasure in presenting Professor Innis for the Tyrrell Medal.
1943 - Gustave Lanctot, MSRC
Citation available in French only.
1942 - D.C. Harvey, FRSC
I have the honour to present to you for the award of the TyrrelI Medal, D. C. Harvey, Archivist of the Province of Nova Scotia, Special Lecturer in Canadian history in Dalhousie University, and member of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada.
Professor Harvey has been teaching for more than a quarter of a century in the Universities of Manitoba, British Columbia, and Dalhousie, during which time he has given public lectures in every province of Canada on different aspects of Canadian history and has published many historical articles in reputable periodicals.
He was an original member and later President of the Canadian Historical Association, and President of the Nova Scotia Society. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Geographical Society, an member of the Editorial Board of the Canadian Geographical Journal the Dalhousie Review, the Canadian Historical Review, etc. Since 1931 Professor Harvey has been a member of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, and, since 1940, Nova Scotian representative on the Geographic Board of Canada.
He has spent many summers in the Dominion Archives, Ottawa, some of the results being published in The French Régime in Prince Edward Island.
As Archivist for Nova Scotia, Professor Harvey has made available a great mass of material for historical research on the history of the Maritime Provinces and directed many studies of the material which have been published as publications, bulletins, and reports of the Public Archives of Nova Scotia. These official publications, as well as articles which have appeared from time to time in Canadian periodicals, have made the provincial Archives known far beyond the borders of Canada.
Of his long list of publications - books, pamphlets, and articles - three books must not fail to be mentioned here: The French Régime in Prince Edward Island, published in 1926; his edition of Whelan's The Union of the British Provinces, published in 1927; and his work on The Colonization of Canada, published in 1936.
It has often been remarked in the last twenty years or so that the older way of writing history in Canada disappeared when the younger men, who had profited by study in the History School of Oxford, returned and began to base their work on documentary material. Among these younger Canadian historians, Professor Harvey has, in my opinion, a distinctive place. All his writing shows a preoccupation with the cultural and literary history of Canada. He has not ignored the influences of geography and economic conditions on our development, but he is, as the French would say, a human geographer and a human economist, and has contended that the mind and spirit of man can control brute matter.
1941 - Arthur S. Morton, FRSC
I have the honour to present to you for the award of the Tyrrell Medal, Arthur S. Morton, Professor Emeritus of the University of Saskatchewan and Archivist of the Province of Saskatchewan.
Dr. Morton's earlier interest was in church and mediaeval history but for more than a score of years he has devoted himself to recording the development of the Canadian West. The breadth of this later interest is shown in his extensive studies, dealing not only with the period of the explorer and the fur-trader but concerned also with more modern days when the coming of the railways, the arrival of tens of thousands of settlers, and the cultivation of wheat has, within the lifetime of an ordinary man, transformed an area of imperial size.
In all of Dr. Morton's writings we are aware of his mastery of geographical detail, his biographical knowledge, and his acquaintance with the technique and processes of the human activities which have affected the West. He knows the prairies, the buffalo, and the Indians of the plains, and in his pages we are led to know them also. By his work in the Archives of the Hudson's Bay Company he has thrown new light on the business methods and organization of that great company.
As joint author with Professor Chester Martin, the recipient in 1940 of this same honour, he produced in 1938 The History of Prairie Settlement, the second volume in the series "Canadian Frontiers of Settlement". Here is set forth the story of settlement and agriculture on the prairies from fur-trading days until 1925. A competent reviewer has said of this co-operative study that it may well stand, up to 1910 at least, as "a task accomplished that need not be repeated." Based upon sources of the most diverse character we are presented with a panorama of the new country, wheat farming, ranching, coal mining, irrigation of dry lands, frosts, dry and wet seasons, rust and grasshoppers—nothing appears to have been left out.
Almost concurrently with the volume just mentioned there appeared Dr. Morton's History of the Canadian West to 1870-71 where in one volume we have the chief attempt that has yet been made to deal with the subject as a whole. No one could have written this book who did not know the geography of the country at first hand. Nor could it have been written save by one who could connect human action with geography and topography.
To all students of Canadian history it is a source of gratification that his own Province of Saskatchewan has entrusted him with the care and organization of its Archives. This official action will serve not only its main purpose but will also, we may expect, enable Dr. Morton to extend yet further the knowledge of the particular area of Canada upon which his studies have already thrown illumination.
Permit me to present to you Dr. Arthur S. Morton, teacher, scholar, archivist, and historian.
1940 - Chester Martin, FRSC
Professor Chester Martin, whom this year the Royal Society of Canada has chosen for the award of the Tyrrell Medal, worthily deserves the honour. In the University of New Brunswick, of which he is a graduate, he evinced promising abilities, and became in 1904 a Rhodes Scholar, the first indeed from this continent. At Balliol he set a good pace for a long line of successors, winning in the University a Gladstone Memorial prize, a Brassey studentship, and a Beit scholarship. In 1909 he was appointed Professor of History in the University of Manitoba and in it he developed a first-class department. From time to time he was a member of various government Commissions, and was Counsel for the Province of Manitoba before the Federal Resources Commission. In 1929 he succeeded Professor Wrong in Toronto, and has upheld with distinction the great traditions of that Department of History. Those achievements, together with his output of many books and other publications, based on thorough research and solid learning and written in pregnant and measured style, have given Professor Martin an eminent position among Candian historians.
1939 - E.-Z. Massicotte, MSRC
Citation available in French only.
1938 - William Wood, FRSC
William Wood has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada for thirty-three years, and in that time he has earned the respect and affection of his associates. He is esteemed as much for his qualities of the heart as for his qualities of the mind. Unfortunately no medal has yet been endowed in recognition of qualities of the heart, but the Society does find itself in the happy position that it may publicly acknowledge Colonel Wood's outstanding contributions to the history of Canada.
In his numerous published works, some of them forming part of the series issued by the Champlain Society; others contributed to the Chronicles of Canada, the Chronicles of America, and the Pageant of America; others again dealing with such special subjects as are embodied in The King's Book of Quebec, In the Heart of Old Canada, and Animal Sanctuaries in Labrador, Colonel Wood has put the results of years of painstaking, enthusiastic, and scholarly research. And as he has been admirable in the collection and marshalling of his material, so he has been equally admirable in putting it before his readers in a clear and entirely readable form.
He has served his country long and faithfully and well, in peace as well as in war. Probably no other English-speaking Canadian has a better or more sympathetic understanding of French-Canadian life and character, or of certain phases of the history of Quebec. Nor does any other Canadian enjoy a wider reputation as an authority on the military and naval history of this country.
The Royal Society of Canada delights to honour one of the most distinguished of Canadian historians.
1937 - M. Aegidius Fauteux, MSRC
Citation available in French only.
1936 - W. Stewart Wallace, FRSC
The writing of history has undergone a remarkable change within the last fifty years, and nowhere more so than in Canada. The old method was based very largely upon secondary sources, and was, in many cases curiously free from the hampering bonds of impartiality. Canadian historians of today try to live up to the ideal that history should be written objectively rather than from the point of view of the partisan, and that no statement of fact should be put down that has not been tested in the light of original documents. If they can at the same time put together the results of their studies in logical form, and make it readable, they deserve to be remembered even in their own country. Such an historian is William Stewart Wallace, M.A. of Balliol, formerly Professor of English and History at Western University, then Professor of History at McMaster, later lecturer in History at the University of Toronto, for some years editor of the Canadian Historical Review, and now librarian of the University of Toronto. In the spare time that only busy men can find, he has managed to write or edit more than a dozen books in his chosen field. The Society now has the privilege of adding his name to the list of distinguished historians who have been awarded the Tyrrell Medal.
1935 - Ernest Alexander Cruikshank, FRSC
Under the terms of gift of the Tyrrell Medal it is to be awarded for outstanding work in connection with the history of Canada. In awarding the medal this year to Brigadier-General Ernest Alexander Cruikshank the Society recognizes many years of conscientious and penetrating research, the results of which, embodied in books and papers, have been and will continue to be of incalculable value to students of Canadian history.
Brigadier-General Cruikshank was for some time in charge of military manuscripts in the Public Archives of Canada, and between 1918 and 1921 was Director of the Historical Section of the General Staff in Ottawa. Since 1919 he has been Chairman of the Historical Sites and Monuments Board of Canada. He is a member of various historical societies; was president of the Ontario Historical Society 1921-22; and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society of England, as well as of this Society. He is the author of a long list of books and papers relating particularly to the War of 1812 and to the history of Upper Canada.
1934 - John Clarence Webster, FRSC
The Society has satisfaction this year in awarding the Tyrrell Medal to one who has done a great deal to preserve and make better known the historical records of the Maritime Provinces--John Clarence Webster.
Dr. Webster is one of those fortunate individuals who, after a brilliant career in his chosen profession, is able on retirement to turn his surplus energy into another field of human endeavour. Dr. Webster studied Medicine at Edinburgh, Leipzic and Berlin. At Edinburgh he was Vans Dunlop Scholar, Beaney Prizeman, Gold Medallist and Research Fellow. He was First Assistant to the Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Edinburgh, Lecturer on Gynecology at McGill, and Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Rush Medical College, University of Chicago. He is the author of a number of text-books, papers and monographs in this particular field of Medicine. He holds the degrees and distinctions of M.D., C.M., D.Sc., LL.D., F.R.C.P., F.A.C.S., F.R.S. Edinburgh (retired), and FRSC
He is the author of a number of important historical monographs in connection with the early history of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and has presented to the Archives of New Brunswick an invaluable collection of historical paintings, prints and manuscripts, the result of many years' work.
1933 - Frederick W. Howay, FRSC
Frederick William Howay was born in London, Ontario, in the year of Confederation. He graduated from Dalhousie University in 1890 with the degree of LL.B., and in May, 1933, the University of British Columbia conferred upon him the degree of LL.D., honoris causa. For twenty-five years Dr. Howay has served the State as judge of the County of Westminster, and while dispensing justice he has found time for a great deal of sound work in history, particularly relating to British Columbia. Among his more important works is the History of British Columbia, prepared in collaboration with the late E. O. S. Scholefield. He is also the author of a more compact history of the Province; has contributed to the Cambridge History of the British Empire, and Canada and its Provinces; Zimmerman's Captain Cook and Builders of the West, and has contributed numerous papers and articles to the transactions of learned societies and various quarterlies. He is a member of the Senate of the University of British Columbia, of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, and is a Fellow not only of the Royal Society of Canada but of the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Historical Society. He is an ex-President of the British Columbia Historical Association and a member of various historical societies in Canada and the United States.
1932 - Pierre-Georges Roy, FRSC
Pierre Georges Roy was born in 1870. Early in life he turned to historical work, founding in 1895 the Bulletin des Recherches historiques, which is still running, a most useful medium for research and information in the details of history, besides publishing all sorts of documents. At the same time Mr. Roy began a long series of genealogical notices and family histories. Among other works he has published Le Sieur de Vincennes, Le Vieux Québec and several volumes of Les Petites choses de notre histoire.
After being for several years the representative of the Canadian Archives at Quebec, he was appointed in 1920 the Archivist of the Province of Quebec. He organised the provincial archives as well as the judicial archives, and began a series of most precious annual reports crammed with historical documents. At the same time, he inventoried many collections and published a score of calendars of such sections. As a matter of fact he has put on the students' tables most of the wealth of the Quebec archives. As secretary to the Commission of Historical Monuments, he has edited some very interesting volumes relating to the churches, the old manors, and the city of Quebec. He has been an indefatigable pioneer and builder in the historical domain and has last year been appointed curator of the Quebec Provincial Museum. Member of the Royal Society, he has been made doctor by the three universities of Laval, Ottawa and Indiana. He has received the Legion of Honour from France.
1931 - Lawrence J. Burpee, FRSC
In presenting the Tyrrell Medal to Mr. Lawrence Burpee, the Society honours one of its chief officers and at the same time makes an award which meets very closely the intention of the founder. The medal, as you will remember, is to be awarded for meritorious historical work and for the collection of historical material. Mr. Burpee has added works of great merit to our national library of history and has been active in the collection and examination of historical material and in making it available for students.
Among his published works we need only mention "The Search for the Western Sea", "Pathfinders of the Great Plains", "The Discovery of Canada", to recall to your minds the value of these contributions to the history of the early explorations of this country. "The Encyclopedia of Canadian History" and "The Historical Atlas of Canada" are two of Mr. Burpee's achievements; they have been found most useful for reference by students of our history.
He brought to the editing of the journals of La Vérendrye all his knowledge of the time and the routes covered by the explorer. He has also contributed to the "Encyclopedia Britannica", "Encyclopedia Americana", "Canadian Archives Publications", "The British Association for the Advancement of Science", "Canada and its Provinces", "Cambridge History of the British Empire", as well as to our own Transactions.
Active in all things that promote the interests of culture, particularly in the line of history, Mr. Burpee saw the advantage that would follow the organization of those interested in Canadian History, and succeeded in founding the Canadian Historical Association. He was its president for some years and is still interested in its activity and progress.
May I mention last his valued services to the Society as honorary secretary, a position in which he has been ever ready to promote the interests of the Society, to add to its influence and to keep alive the traditions of his office.
1930 - Adam Shortt, FRSC
It will soon be fifty years since Dr. Adam Shortt first received a gold medal, for he was awarded one for distinction in Philosophy at Queen's University in 1883. Since then he has played many parts--all with success. He had three almae matres, for, after taking his Master's degree at Kingston, he sought further wisdom, with discreet impartiality, at both Glasgow and Edinburgh. He soon returned however to his native Ontario, to be forthwith enlisted in the service of Queen's University, wherein he continued for twenty-three years - first as Assistant Professor of Philosophy, later (from 1892 to 1908) as Professor of Political Science. Though eminent as a teacher, he believed himself to have duties towards a wider circle than he could influence at the University, and during these years he served on various public Commissions and Boards, besides publishing numerous papers on economics and finance, writing a Life of Lord Sydenham, and editing a most useful collection of Documents relating to the Constitutional History of Canada. In 1908 he withdrew from academic work to become a member of the Board of Civil Service Commissioners at Ottawa, and since 1917 he has been Chairman of the Board of Historical Publications at the Public Archives of Canada, an institution whose immense value to the Dominion is seldom adequately recognised. During his later years Dr. Shortt's literary activity has not slackened. With Dr. Doughty he has edited that monumental work, "Canada and her Provinces", to which his own contributions are numerous; and five years ago he published a series of Documents relating to currency, exchange, and finance during the French period of Canadian history. His indefatigable zeal for learning and the public good was fittingly honoured when in 1911 the King named him a Companion of St. Michael and St. George; and the Royal Society of Canada now rejoices to honour itself by bestowing upon him the Tyrrell Medal.
1929 - George Mackinnon Wrong, FRSC
In awarding the Tyrrell Medal this year to George Mackinnon Wrong, the Royal Society recognizes thirty-five years of notable achievement in the field of history, and particularly of the history of Canada. In 1894 Dr. Wrong succeeded Sir Daniel Wilson as Professor of History in the University of Toronto. What the Department of History of that University has accomplished since then, in the training of young Canadians, is largely due to the inspiration and enthusiasm of Dr. Wrong. And it is to be remembered that his outstanding work as an educationalist represents but one phase of Dr. Wrong's activities. For many years he has interested himself in the field of Canadian historical research; he is the author of a number of works in history or historical biography, notably his recently published and admirable Rise and Fall of New France; and his knowledge, judgment and energy have been repeatedly placed at the service of Canada and of such national organizations as the Royal Society, the Champlain Society and the Canadian Historical Association.
Because of unavoidable delays, the dies of the Tyrrell Medal have not yet been completed. The actual presentation of the 1929 Medal, as well as the 1928 Medal which was awarded to Senator Chapais, therefore, must be postponed to a later occasion.
1928 - Thomas Chapais, FRSC
Although this Medal is not yet available, it was the wish of the donor that it should be awarded this year, the Medal itself to be presented at some future date. For 1928 it goes to Thomas Chapais, Litt.D., FRSC, Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, Senator of the Dominion, Member of the Legislative Council of Quebec, and a former President of this Society. Dr. Chapais has not only filled very important offices in the Government of Quebec, but he has been Professor of History in the University of Laval, and is the author of a number of valuable works dealing with various aspects of the history of Canada, notably his great work Cours d’Histoire du Canada, in four volumes.