31 Facts About Donald Creighton

Donald Creighton denounced the Liberal Party for undermining Canada's link with Great Britain and moving towards closer relations with the United States, a policy which he strongly disliked.

Donald Creighton attended Victoria College, in the University of Toronto, where he received his BA in 1925.

Donald Creighton then attended Balliol College at Oxford University, where he received his MA before returning to Canada to teach history, at the University of Toronto for his entire career.

Donald Creighton belonged to a generation of English Canadians who were proud of the British Empire, and his anglophilia was often expressed in his books.

Donald Creighton received the Royal Society of Canada's J B Tyrrell Historical Medal in 1951, along with Jean Bruchesi.

Donald Creighton died in his sleep on December 18,1979, from cancer, in Brooklin, Ontario, aged 77.

In 1967, Donald Creighton was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.

Donald Creighton was heavily influenced by Harold Innis and took an economic approach to Canadian history.

Donald Creighton argued that since impassable waterfalls and rapids prevented an economic empire from being built, Canadian elites embraced a political empire, namely Confederation as a consolation prize.

Donald Creighton saw history as a literary art and rejected calls for history to be seen as social science.

Donald Creighton was famous for spending as much time crafting his prose as he did in research, and Donald Creighton often claimed that the best historical work should read like a well written novel.

Donald Creighton disliked what he called "fat funereal volumes" of unreadable biographies, and argued that well-written books should be the historian's objective.

Donald Creighton often engaged in feuds with historians whose interpretations he disliked, but he was known to be kind-hearted and munificent towards his students, albeit severe with those who engaged in work that he thought was wrong-headed.

Donald Creighton made no effort at objectivity and was openly subjective and partisan in regards to his likes and dislikes.

Donald Creighton was fond of contrasting Canada's participation in the First World War and the Second World War.

In Donald Creighton's view, Robert Borden was a tough and able leader who, despite initial mistakes and missteps, was able to fully mobilize Canada and ensure that Canada contributed disproportionately to the Allied victory in 1918.

Donald Creighton saw the rest of Canadian history as one long slide, which he largely blamed on the Liberal Party.

In contrast, Donald Creighton saw William Lyon Mackenzie King as a weak and indecisive figure who was more concerned with safeguarding the electoral fortunes of the Liberals than winning the war, and who kept Canadian troops out of combat as long as possible to avoid difficult decisions on conscription.

Donald Creighton was regarded by many as the foremost historian of his day, and his influence is still strongly felt.

Donald Creighton helped initiate the Canadian Centenary Series, a nineteen-volume history of Canada, and served as its advisory editor.

In later years, Donald Creighton frequently expressed himself through the mass media.

Donald Creighton felt that the position of the French language in Canada should be more or less what the British North America Act had prescribed.

The Quiet Revolution of the 1960s had led to a more assertive French Canadian nationalism that Donald Creighton had no sympathy with.

In 1964, when anti-British riots erupted in Quebec City when Queen Elizabeth II visited la belle province, a furious Donald Creighton wrote Elizabeth had been "humiliated".

Likewise, Donald Creighton was proud of Canada's British past, and regarded efforts to erase that past as a national disgrace.

In 1972, Donald Creighton emerged as a leading critic of the proposed Pickering Airport.

Donald Creighton attacked the Liberal continentalist Frank Underhill as almost a traitor, imaging in one essay a smug Underhill well satisfied after 1945 with the British Empire in decline, the United States ascendant and Canada falling into the American sphere of influence.

In particular, Donald Creighton was strongly opposed to the demands made by the Quebec government for more power at the expense of the federal government during the Quiet Revolution and afterwards.

Donald Creighton favored a tough line against the Parti Quebecois government of Rene Levesque, and was one of the first to advocate partitioning Quebec in the event of a vote to leave Confederation, writing that northern Quebec was historically part of Rupert's Land and was given to Quebec by the Dominion government only in 1912.

Later, Donald Creighton cemented his reputation for anti-American views with his only novel, 1978's The Take-Over.

Donald Creighton frequently proclaimed the aphorism that a people who forget their past are doomed not to have a future.