Date Published:
August 2004

Biographies of Prominent Quebec and Canadian

Historical Figures

Edgar Wardell McInnis

(1899-1973)

Damien-Claude Bélanger,

Department of History,

McGill University .

Historian, poet, and soldier. During the Great War McInnis served as an artilleryman with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in France. He recounted his wartime experiences in two collections of poetry, Poems Written at "the Front" (1918) and The Road to Arras (1920). He taught at the University of Toronto's Department of History for several years before becoming the executive director of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs in 1951. A member of the original staff of York University in 1960, he became York's dean of graduate studies in 1964. An historian keenly interested in international relations, Edgar W. McInnis published The Unguarded Frontier: A History of American-Canadian Relations in 1942. His Canada: A Political and Social History was widely used as textbook in Canadian History classes on the campuses of colleges and universities in Canada throughout the sixties, the seventies and the eighties.