George Stanley - Career

Career

George F.G. Stanley was born in Calgary, Alberta and received a BA from the University of Alberta in Edmonton. He went to Keble College, University of Oxford, in 1929 as the Rhodes Scholar from Alberta, and earned a BA, MA, MLitt and DPhil; he also played for the Oxford University Ice Hockey Club, which won the Spengler Cup in 1931. At Oxford, he wrote his ground-breaking book, The Birth Of Western Canada: A History Of The Riel Rebellions, and began his lifelong work on Louis Riel.

Stanley returned to Canada in 1936 and was appointed a professor of history at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick. He joined the Canadian Army upon arriving there. During World War II, he served as a historian in the Historical Section at Canadian Army Headquarters in London; he was also responsible for administering the War Artist Program, whose staff included Bruno Bobak, Molly Bobak, Alex Colville, Charles Comfort, Lawren P. Harris and Will Ogilvie. Stanley was discharged as a Lieutenant-Colonel in 1947. He then taught at the University of British Columbia, holding the first ever chair in Canadian history in Canada. In 1949, Stanley went to teach at the Royal Military College of Canada, where he remained for twenty years. At RMC, he served as the first Dean of Arts for seven years and had the rare opportunity to build ab initio an outstanding faculty in the humanities and social sciences. His students included John de Chastelain, Jack Granatstein, and Desmond Morton. Thanks in part to Stanley's efforts as RMC Dean of Arts, the Royal Military College of Canada Pipes and Drums were equipped with most of their highland kit, including the Mackenzie tartan in 1965. In 1969, Stanley returned to Mount Allison University to become director of the new Canadian Studies program, the first of its kind in Canada. He retired from teaching in 1975, but continued to write and remained active in public life well into his nineties. He is buried in Sackville, New Brunswick.

The historian, R.C. Macleod of the University of Alberta, has written that: “Much of English Canada’s understanding of the formative years of the Canadian West comes from George Stanley’s remarkable work, The Birth of Western Canada. Considering that it was one of the earliest works by an academically trained historian in this country, it has stood the test of time remarkably well. No other work of Canadian history published before the Second World War is as regularly read by historians, students and the general public…. subject will always be identified with his name.”