Article

Robert MacGregor Dawson

Published Online November 26, 2012

Last Edited July 24, 2015

Robert MacGregor Dawson, political scientist (b at Bridgewater, NS 1 Mar 1895; d there 16 July 1958). He was a graduate of Dalhousie, Harvard and London School of Economics, and taught at Dalhousie, Rutgers and University of Saskatchewan before going to University of Toronto in 1937.

Robert MacGregor Dawson, political scientist (b at Bridgewater, NS 1 Mar 1895; d there 16 July 1958). He was a graduate of Dalhousie, Harvard and London School of Economics, and taught at Dalhousie, Rutgers and University of Saskatchewan before going to University of Toronto in 1937. He wrote major studies on the Canadian civil service, the constitution and on Dominion status, and his textbook, The Government of Canada, first published in 1947, was the standard introduction to the subject for a generation of students. The sixth edition of it was published in 1987.

Many of his graduate students became prominent academics and public servants. He demanded high standards of scholarship and literary style, but with colleagues and students his arguments were leavened by a vital enthusiasm and a sense of humour. He left U of T in 1951 to write the official biography of Mackenzie KING, but completed only one volume before his death.