The Review Reviewed or Fifty Years with the Beaver Patrol

Abstract

ANNIVERSARIES INVITE APPRAISALS. But appraising the first two hundred numbers of the Canadian Historical Review half century after it began publication in March 1920 is no short or simple task. One frequently becomes engrossed in forgotten reviews and old controversies, diverted by articles on buffaloes and snow, the old French-Canadian horse, or polar bears in mediaeval commerce. And no clear-cut judgment comes at the conclusion. Still, this much seems certain: great deal of the history of history in Canada lies in these pages, and some of its best scholarship as well. Although the Review first appeared in 1920, it had, of course, an antecedent in the annual Review of Historical Publications Relating to Canada founded by Professor G. M. Wrong at the University of Toronto in I896. Indeed, the true father of the CUR, Dr W. S. Wallace, who joined the Toronto History Department in I9IO , began as co-editor on the older Review; he first assisted G. M. Wrong and H. H. Langton, as he later recalled, as a combined office boy and printer's devil. m Stewart Wallace increasingly took over editorial responsibility. After returning from war service in 1918, he expressed his awareness that new era was opening in Canadian historical scholarship by proposing that quarterly containing articles as well as reviews hould replace the annual publication, on the grounds that the fastincreasing number of historical works on Canada required more space for review and the rising historical profession i the country needed an outlet for its original research. Professor Wrong put the proposal to the university's Studies Committee in 1919. The outcome was an authorization to launch the Canadian Historical Review in I92O , with $IOOO allocated from the