Article

Henry Forbes Angus

Published Online November 4, 2007

Last Edited December 15, 2013

Henry Forbes Angus, educator, public servant (b at Victoria, BC 19 Apr 1891; d 17 Sept 1991). After completing a BCL (1914) and MA (1919) at Oxford and being made a barrister of law at the Inner Temple in England, Angus returned to Canada and earned a law degree at McGill University.

Angus, Henry Forbes

Henry Forbes Angus, educator, public servant (b at Victoria, BC 19 Apr 1891; d 17 Sept 1991). After completing a BCL (1914) and MA (1919) at Oxford and being made a barrister of law at the Inner Temple in England, Angus returned to Canada and earned a law degree at McGill University. Shortly after being called to the BC Bar in 1920, he began a distinguished teaching career at UBC (1919-59) as a professor of economics, political science and sociology which included being named the first dean of UBC's Faculty of Graduate Studies (1949).

Angus was a key member of the Rowell-Sirois Royal Commission on DOMINION-PROVINCIAL RELATIONS, 1937-40, as well as serving on the Royal Commission on TRANSPORTATION (1949-51). From 1940-45 he was seconded to work in the Department of External Affairs. He worked for full rights for JAPANESE CANADIANS in the inter-war years and vigorously opposed their incarceration and suspension of rights during WWII.

After his retirement, he chaired the Public Utilities Commission of BC (1959-65), Angus wrote widely on race relations and on international relations and trade, specializing in Asia-Pacific issues. Canada and Her Great Neighbor: Sociological Surveys of Opinions and Attitudes in Canada Concerning the United States (1938) and Canada and the Far East, 1940-1953 (1953) are his best-known publications.