Arthur Reginald Marsden Lower

Professor at Wesley College, Winnipeg (1929-47), and Douglas Professor of Canadian History at Queen's University, Kingston (1947-59), Lower, the son of English immigrants, was the first of his family to attend university (U of T, Harvard). His first books, The Trade in Square Timber (1932), Settlement and the Forest Frontier in Eastern Canada (1936) and The North American Assault on the Canadian Forest (1938), detailed the role of the forest in Canadian development, following the staple thesis elaborated by Harold Innis.

In Colony to Nation (1946), written during WWII, Lower sought a basis for a sense of national community which might unite French and English Canadians. Recipient of the Governor General's Award (1946, 1954), the Tyrrell Medal of the Royal Society of Canada (1947), and a Companion of the Order of Canada (1968), Lower was also an honorary chief of the Ojibwa; his native name, Kikugaygawbigoneden, meant "The Recorder of His People's Tradition."