Innis, Harold Adams

Innis, Harold Adams, 1894–1952, Canadian political economist, b. Otterville, Ontario. One of Canada's leading economic historians, Innis wrote about various facets of Canadian culture and economy. In such books as The Fur Trade in Canada (1930, repr. 1956) and The Cod Fisheries (1940, repr. 1978), Innis explored Canadian natural resource industries and how they affected culture, politics, and history. Innis' work underscored the relationship of Canada to Western civilization. He taught at the Univ. of Toronto from 1920 until his death in 1952.

Bibliography

See biography by D. G. Creighton (1978).

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Innis, Harold Adams 

Born Nov. 5, 1894; died Nov. 8, 1952. Canadian bourgeois economist and historian. Doctor of philosophy (1920).

In 1916, Innis graduated from McMaster University (in Hamilton, Ontario). In 1920 he became a professor of political economy at the University of Toronto, and from 1937 on he was dean of the department of economics. Innis was president of the Canadian Political Science Association (from 1937) and president of an association of economic historians (from 1942). He was the founder of the study of Canada’s economic history. He did research on the principal branches of the country’s economy and on the interrelationship between politics and economics, attributing great importance to the influence of the geographic environment and of transportation on the life of society.

WORKS

Political Economy in the Modern State. Toronto, 1946.
Empire and Communications. Oxford, 1950.
Changing Concepts of Time. Toronto, 1952.

REFERENCE

The Culture of Contemporary Canada. Edited by J. Park. New York, 1957.