Lovat Dickson

Dickson, Horatio Henry Lovat

Horatio Henry Lovat Dickson, publisher, writer (b at Victoria, Australia 30 June 1902; d at Toronto 2 Jan 1987). Of United Empire Loyalist descent and a member of the Royal Society of Canada, Lovat Dickson was educated at the University of Alberta (BA, 1927; MA, 1929) before becoming the first Canadian to achieve a commanding position in British publishing. From 1941 until his retirement in 1964, he was general editor and a director of Macmillan & Co, London, an experience recounted in part in his 2 memoirs,The Ante-Room (1959) and The House of Words (1963). Author of 6 biographies, including The Museum Makers: the Story of the Royal Ontario Museum (1986), he is best remembered as publisher, promoter and biographer of Grey Owl [Archibald Stansfeld BELANEY], whom he defended against accusations of being an imposter in Half-Breed: The Story of Grey Owl (1939), and righted imbalanced portraits of in his definitive, Wilderness Man: The Strange Story of Grey Owl (1973).