George MacKinnon Wrong

George MacKinnon Wrong FRSC (June 25, 1860 – June 29, 1948) was a Canadian clergyman and historian.

George MacKinnon Wrong
Born(1860-06-25)June 25, 1860
Grovesend in Elgin County, Canada West
DiedJune 29, 1948(1948-06-29) (aged 88)
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
NationalityCanadian
Other namesGeorge McKinnon Wrong
EmployerUniversity of Toronto
Known forHistorian
Spouse(s)Sophia Hume Blake, the daughter of Edward Blake
ChildrenMargaret Christian Wrong, Edward Murray Wrong, Harold Verschoyle Wrong, Humphrey Hume Wrong, and Agnes Honoria Wrong

Life and career

Born at Grovesend in Elgin County, Canada West (now Ontario), he was ordained in the Anglican priesthood in 1883 after attending Wycliffe College. In 1894, as successor to Sir Daniel Wilson,[1] he was appointed professor and head of the Department of History at the University of Toronto from which he retired in 1927. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1908 and received an honorary LLD from McGill University in 1919 and the University of Toronto in 1941. Wrong died in Toronto, Ontario on June 29, 1948.

A believer in the historian's moral duty to interpret the past for society's present needs, Wrong viewed Canadian history in terms of the country's British and French origins and the American presence. As a teacher, administrator, writer, and a moving force in the early days of the Canadian Historical Association, he helped to provide an intellectual base for a developing Canadian nationality. In 1896-97 he founded the Review of Historical Publications Relating to Canada (since 1920 the Canadian Historical Review) and in 1905 he co-founded the Champlain Society. He wrote numerous monographs and texts on Canadian history, the best being A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs (1908). Formal in habit and something of an anglophile in taste, Wrong influenced a generation of students.

Wrong's eldest son Murray was a long-time friend of Vincent Massey. He "assumed his ecclesiastical robes" in 1915 to assist in Massey's marriage to Alice Parkin. Wrong owned a property near Canton, Ontario. Massey bought the adjacent property in 1918 and converted it into his principal residence, Batterwood House, in 1927.[2]

Personal life

In 1886, Wrong married Sophia Hume Blake, the daughter of Edward Blake, Premier of Ontario (1871 to 1872) and leader of the Liberal Party of Canada (1880 to 1887). They had five children:[3]

The historian Rosalind Mitchison and the physician Oliver Wrong were both grandchildren by Edward Murray Wrong. The sociologist Dennis Wrong was his grandson by Humphrey Hume Wrong.

All of the Wrong children and their father were graduates of the University of Toronto.

Selected works
  • The Conquest of New France (1910)
  • The Fall of Canada (1914)
  • The United States and Canada: A Political Study (1921)
  • The Rise and Fall of New France (1928)
  • Britain's History (1929)
  • Canada and the American Revolution: The Disruption of the First British Empire (1935)

References
  1. "WRONG, George MacKinnon". Who's Who. 59: 1943. 1907.
  2. Milligan, Frank (2004). Eugene A. Forsey: An Intellectual Biography. University of Calgary Press. pp. 19–20. ISBN 978-1-55238-118-2. Retrieved 2014-07-11.
  3. "Annual Report 2004-2005" (PDF). University of Toronto Archives and Records Management Services.
  4. Brouwer, Ruth Compton (2002). Modern Women Modernizing Men (PDF). UBC Press. ISBN 0774809531.
  5. "January through February 1928 Extractions of names for Births, Marriages, Deaths and Burials. Extracted and transcribed by members of the Elgin OGS". St. Thomas Times-Journal. Archived from the original on April 11, 2006.
  6. "Lieutenant Harold V. Wrong". Commonwealth War Graves Commissioner Debt of Honour Register. Archived from the original on 2006-01-16.

Further reading
  • Berger, Carl. The Writing of Canadian History: Aspects of English-Canadian Historical Writing Since 1900 (2nd ed. 1987), pp 1–31.
  • Damien-Claude Bélanger (2004). "George MacKinnon (George M.) Wrong". The Quebec History Encyclopedia. Archived from the original on February 13, 2006. Retrieved March 16, 2006.
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