Donald Creighton: A Life in History, by Donald Wright

Abstract

Reviewed by: Donald B. Smith (), Professor Emeritus of History, University of CalgaryDonald Wright, associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of New Brunswick, has written an impressive biography of Donald Creighton, known in the mid-twentieth century as English Canada's greatest historian (9, 198, 329). The author's writing style is commendable, the book is well organized, and the extensive research supporting the text is exceptional. Well-chosen illustrations and a complete index add greatly to this well-constructed biography. The author's introduction eloquently sets the stage for the 13 chapters that follow. Wright's Donald Creighton: A Life in History makes a significant and important contribution to our understanding of English Canadian historical writing in the twentieth century. It explains well Creighton's British-Canadian nationalism and, in his later years, his strident anti-Americanism.The biography owes much of its success to the author's fine research in both primary and secondary sources, and his interviews. The author has taken a multitude of facts and transformed them into a vivid and informative narrative. Donald Creighton (1902-1979) advanced quickly in his career as a history professor at the University of Toronto, where he taught from 1927 to his retirement in 1971. With the publication of The Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence in 1937, he gained the reputation as his generation's leading Canadian historian. emphasis on the importance of the St. Lawrence River in opening up the interior of the continent provided the narrative thread for the book. two-volume study of John A. Macdonald, The Young Politician (1952) and The Old Chieftain (1955), which both won the Governor General's Award for non-fiction in their respective years of publication, solidified his reputation. He had a genius for narrative history (321).Don Wright hides nothing in his biography. The eminent professor was a difficult person to get along with. In the author's words: His fuse was famously short and he could explode without warning, meaning his friends, and colleagues learned to walk on eggshells in his presence (9). work drive consumed him, weakening him both physically and emotionally. Fortunately for him, Luella, his devoted wife, never wavered in her support. He did have several close male friends, three among them being John Gray, his editor at Macmillan; Robert Finch, a University of Toronto French professor and poet; and Harold Innis, the celebrated University of Toronto political economist, whose biography, Harold Adams Innis: Portrait of a Scholar Creighton wrote in 1957. To others, however, Creighton often appeared arrogant. He had limited interpersonal skills, and as Chair of the History Department at the University of Toronto from 1955 to 1959, he was a disaster (chapter 9). He had no close friends in the History Department (220).Donald Creighton was a British-Canadian historian, one who showed little interest in French Canada. He lived for several months in France in the late 1920s. We learn that although he loved reading French novels (9), he apparently read little on Canadian history in French-language sources (192). No evidence is provided that Donald Creighton ever spoke French in Canada. …