Desmond Morton (historian)

Professor Desmond Morton, OC , Ph.D. , FRSC is a Canadian historian who specializes in the history of the Canadian military, as well as the history of Canadian political and industrial relations.

Born in Calgary in 1937, Morton is a graduate of the Collège Militaire Royal de St-Jean, the Royal Military College of Canada,a Rhodes Scholar, the University of Oxford (where he received his PhD), and the London School of Economics. He spent ten years in the Canadian Army prior to beginning his teaching career.

Morton is the Hiram Mills professor of History at McGill University, as well as the past director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, in Montreal, Quebec. Prior to that, he was Principal of Erindale College, University of Toronto, from 1986 to 1994. Before beginning his teaching career, Morton served as an advisor to Tommy Douglas of the New Democratic Party and informally advised Brian Mulroney of the Progressive Conservatives.

Morton received his doctorate from the University of London. He is the author of over thirty-five books on Canada, including the popular A Short History of Canada ISBN 0-7710-6509-4.

In 1996, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. One of his well known quotes is: "For Canadians, Vimy Ridge was a nation building experience. For some, then and later, it symbolized the fact that the Great War was also Canada's war of independence..."

While Morton is widely regarded as an expert in all areas of Canadian history, he specializes in Canadian military and industrial history as well as Nationalisms in Canada. He is noted as one of the few remaining historians who personally interviewed and studied veterans from the Militia sent to the North-West Rebellion of 1869.

Recently, Professor Morton announced that the 2005-2006 academic year would be his last before retirement.