Article

Norman Hillmer

Published Online September 3, 2009

Last Edited July 28, 2014

George Norman Hillmer, historian, professor (b at Niagara Falls, Ont, 24 Nov 1942). Norman Hillmer was educated at the UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO and at Cambridge University, where he received a PhD in 1974. In 1972, he had begun working as a historian in the Department of National Defence.

Hillmer, (George) Norman

George Norman Hillmer, historian, professor (b at Niagara Falls, Ont, 24 Nov 1942). Norman Hillmer was educated at the UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO and at Cambridge University, where he received a PhD in 1974. In 1972, he had begun working as a historian in the Department of National Defence. He became senior historian in the department's Directorate of History in 1980 and spent the next decade overseeing research on the official histories of the Canadian Air Force and the Royal Canadian Navy. He left Defence in 1990 for CARLETON UNIVERSITY, where he became professor of history and international affairs and won several teaching awards.

Hillmer is author or editor of more than 20 books on Canadian history and politics, most dealing with Canadian foreign, defence and trade policy. For Hillmer, Canada's international policies are interwoven with domestic politics and national identity, and are far too complicated to be forced into a single model or paradigm. For Better or For Worse: Canada and the United States into the Twenty-First Century (1991, 2007) and Empire to Umpire: Canada and the World into the 21st Century, both co-authored with J.L. GRANATSTEIN, portray Canada and the United States as both rivals and partners, with a relationship characterized by conflict and cooperation.

Hillmer has argued against the notion of Canadians as instinctively anti-American, most notably in Canada's International Policies: Agendas, Alternatives, and Politics (2008), co-authored with Brian W. Tomlin and Fen Osler Hampson. Instead, Hillmer has emphasized the interdependence of Canada and the US and has described Canadians as living in the contradiction between their wish for independence and their desire for the benefits of cultural, economic and military integration with the United States.

Hillmer's work also seeks to understand Canada's early twentieth-century connection with Great Britain, and her empire. He has written extensively on O.D. Skelton, the founder of the modern Department of External Affairs who sought independence from Britain at a time when few Canadians supported the idea.