Donald Creighton

"Lyrical and richly orchestrated with swelling undertones of disillusionment, torment, and fury, Donald Wright has crafted a Creightonian biography of Creighton." -- H.V. Nelles, L.R. Wilson Professor of Canadian History, McMaster University "Donald Creighton: A Life in History is an impressive biography of one of English Canada's greatest historian. Wright's fine research has taken a multitude of facts and transformed them into a vivid and informative narrative that treats all aspects of Creighton's life." -- Don Smith, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Calgary "Accessible, well written, and balanced between Creighton's private life and his professional activities, Donald Creighton is an excellent book, and one that I read with great interest." -- Marcel Martel, Avie Bennett Historica Chair in Canadian History, York University

Through his virtuoso research into Creighton’s own voluminous papers, Donald Creighton captures the twentieth-century transformation of English Canada through the life and times of one of its leading intellectuals.

A member of the same intellectual generation as Harold Innis, Northrop Frye, and George Grant, Donald Creighton (1902–1979) was English Canada’s first great historian. The author of eleven books, including The Commercial Empire of the St. Lawrence and a two-volume biography of John A. Macdonald, Creighton wrote history as if it “had happened,” he said, “the day before yesterday.” And as a public intellectual, he advised the prime minister of Canada, the premier of Ontario, and – at least on one occasion – the British government.

Yet he was, as Donald Wright shows, also profoundly out of step with his times. As the nation was re-imagined along bilingual and later multicultural lines in the 1960s and 1970s, Creighton defended a British definition of Canada at the same time as he began to fear that he would be remembered only “as a pessimist, a bigot, and a violent Tory partisan.”

Through his virtuoso research into Creighton’s own voluminous papers, Wright paints a sensitive portrait of a brilliant but difficult man. Ultimately, Donald Creighton captures the twentieth-century transformation of English Canada through the life and times of one of its leading intellectuals.