Governor's General Award 1997

Professor Robin Winks, now the Chairman of the Department of History at Yale, has also served as Chair of the Committee on Canadian Studies at Yale for eighteen of the past thirty-five years. It is he who raised the funds for the Visiting Professorship in Canadian Studies, he who has built the University's library collection in Canadiana to the point that it is the strongest in the United States, and he who has organized the offering of courses on Canada in various Yale departments and, until recently, in the School of Law.

Professor Winks is best known in Canadian Studies circles for his persistent championing of the comparative approach to Canadian History. It has been his argument, successfully carried out here and at a wide range of other United States educational institutions, that the unique nature of the Canadian experience is best understood, especially by American students, when that experience is placed in comparative terms. Thus he has written on such subjects as comparative biculturalisms (Canada and South Africa), comparative frontiers (Canada and Australia), and comparative race relations (Canada and the United States). This approach has made possible the introduction of courses with substantial Canadian content at many institutions which felt unable, for reasons of financial or other constraints, to add fully Canadian courses to their curriculum. Indicative of his efforts to see to it that Canada is present in virtually all historical issues is the fact that he has included more Canadian content in his two volume History of Civilization (Prentice Hall, 1984)--now one of the most frequently used undergraduate history texts in the United States--than is present in any other world history or western civilization text.

Professor Winks was one of the founding members of ACSUS, the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States, attended that association's first meetings and was on the Board of Editors of its journal. He prepared an extensive report in the 1970s on the future of the Fulbright program, making the first extended argument for the creation of a Fulbright exchange program with Canada. He was the first American to give the Goodman Lectures in Canada; he received the prestigious Donner Medal in 1989 for his contributions to Canadian Studies; and in 1992-93, he was the first American chosen as Eastman Professor at Oxford University to teach British Commonwealth History, including the introduction of a seminar on Canadian history.

Professor Winks is now engaged in an extensive comparative study of the development of the national park ethic in Canada and the United States, and is the only American student of national parks to have been invited by Parks Canada to be an advisor on the future development of historical parks in Canada.

Five of Professor Winks' publications that are particularly relevant to Canadian history and culture are:

Canada and the United States: The Civil War Years
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 1960; 3rd rev. edition, 1985): a book placed in the White House library, and the first to demonstrate the impact of the United States Civil War on Canadian Confederation;
Blacks in Canada: A History
(Yale University Press, 1971): nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, a book that examines the fate of the fugitive slaves after their arrival in Canada and which launched Afro-Canadian studies. It is being reprinted this year by the McGill-Queen's University Press;
The Relevance of Canadian History
(Macmillan, 1979): Professor Winks' Goodman Lectures, which forcefully put the argument for a comparative approach to Canadian history;
Forty Year Minuet
(Athlone/University of London Press, 1968): on the relationship between Canada and the Anglophonic West Indies; and,
Recent Trends and New Literature in Canadian History
(American Historical Association, 1959): one of Professor Winks' earliest publications, a booklet that he persuaded the American Historical Association to include in a series from which to that time Canada had been excluded.

In sum, since his appointment to the Yale faculty in 1957 until the present time, Professor Winks has been an entrepreneur for Canadian Studies, here and abroad, and indeed in Canada as well, having taught at the Universities of Alberta and Victoria and lectured in virtually every university in Canada. He has published in French as well as English, and has ventured into Canadian detective fiction.

Governor General's International Award for Canadian Studies: 1997 - Robin Winks

		Robin Winks
Professor Robin Winks, now the Chairman of the Department of History at Yale, has also served as Chair of the Committee on Canadian Studies at Yale for eighteen of the past thirty-five years. It is he who raised the funds for the Visiting Professorship in Canadian Studies, he who has built the University's library collection in Canadiana to the point that it is the strongest in the United States, and he who has organized the offering of courses on Canada in various Yale departments and, until recently, in the School of Law. Professor Winks is best known in Canadian Studies circles for his persistent championing of the comparative approach to Canadian History. It has been his argument, successfully carried out here and at a wide range of other United States educational institutions, that the unique nature of the Canadian experience is best understood, especially by American students, when that experience is placed in comparative terms. Thus he has written on such subjects as comparative biculturalisms (Canada and South Africa), comparative frontiers (Canada and Australia), and comparative race relations (Canada and the United States). This approach has made possible the introduction of courses with substantial Canadian content at many institutions which felt unable, for reasons of financial or other constraints, to add fully Canadian courses to their curriculum. Indicative of his efforts to see to it that Canada is present in virtually all historical issues is the fact that he has included more Canadian content in his two volume History of Civilization (Prentice Hall, 1984)--now one of the most frequently used undergraduate history texts in the United States--than is present in any other world history or western civilization text. Professor Winks was one of the founding members of ACSUS, the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States, attended that association's first meetings and was on the Board of Editors of its journal. He prepared an extensive report in the 1970s on the future of the Fulbright program, making the first extended argument for the creation of a Fulbright exchange program with Canada. He was the first American to give the Goodman Lectures in Canada; he received the prestigious Donner Medal in 1989 for his contributions to Canadian Studies; and in 1992-93, he was the first American chosen as Eastman Professor at Oxford University to teach British Commonwealth History, including the introduction of a seminar on Canadian history. Professor Winks is now engaged in an extensive comparative study of the development of the national park ethic in Canada and the United States, and is the only American student of national parks to have been invited by Parks Canada to be an advisor on the future development of historical parks in Canada. Five of Professor Winks' publications that are particularly relevant to Canadian history and culture are: Canada and the United States: The Civil War Years (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1960; 3rd rev. edition, 1985): a book placed in the White House library, and the first to demonstrate the impact of the United States Civil War on Canadian Confederation; Blacks in Canada: A History (Yale University Press, 1971): nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, a book that examines the fate of the fugitive slaves after their arrival in Canada and which launched Afro-Canadian studies. It is being reprinted this year by the McGill-Queen's University Press; The Relevance of Canadian History (Macmillan, 1979): Professor Winks' Goodman Lectures, which forcefully put the argument for a comparative approach to Canadian history; Forty Year Minuet (Athlone/University of London Press, 1968): on the relationship between Canada and the Anglophonic West Indies; and, Recent Trends and New Literature in Canadian History (American Historical Association, 1959): one of Professor Winks' earliest publications, a booklet that he persuaded the American Historical Association to include in a series from which to that time Canada had been excluded. In sum, since his appointment to the Yale faculty in 1957 until the present time, Professor Winks has been an entrepreneur for Canadian Studies, here and abroad, and indeed in Canada as well, having taught at the Universities of Alberta and Victoria and lectured in virtually every university in Canada. He has published in French as well as English, and has ventured into Canadian detective fiction. Close this window