The Hon. Dr. George F.G. Stanley (1907-2002)

C.C., C.D., K.St.J., D.Phil., F.R.S.C., F.R.Hist.S.

Today, we have gathered from across Canada to celebrate the life and mourn the loss of Colonel the Honorable George Francis Gillman Stanley – historian, author, soldier, teacher, and public servant.

Dr. Stanley was blessed with a long and highly productive life.  In the course of his 95 years, he had many accomplishments and earned numerous honours.  He was a Rhodes Scholar, the author or editor of some 16 books (one of which has been continuously in print for over 65 years and become a Canadian classic), as well as scores of articles and other publications.  He was a President of the Canadian Historical Association, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (U.K.), the recipient of twelve honorary degrees, a Companion of the Order of Canada, a Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick, and the designer of the Canadian Red and White Maple Leaf Flag.

During his final years, Colonel Stanley would sometimes remark that he regretted having done so little with his life.  This comment may seem rather perplexing from someone whose career was an uninterrupted series of achievements, but he lived by the maxim that “to whom much is given, much is expected.”

George Stanley was reared on the Edwardian values of compassion, honour, duty and integrity.  His parents were natives of Ontario, but they met in Western Canada and were married at Fort McLeod, NWT, in 1900.  They soon settled in Calgary, where Dr. Stanley’s father traded the adventurous life of a purser on the Empress of Japan, a Canadian Pacific steamer on the Vancouver-to-Asia route, for that of a paper goods wholesaler, and his mother chose homemaking over millinery and music.  Dr. Stanley grew up in a bookish household with a strong sense of history.  John Stanley told his son stories, not only of his own exploits in the Klondike and the Pacific, but also of his military ancestors in Upper Canada.  One of George’s earliest recollections was hearing about the sinking of the Titanic; friends from Calgary were on board.  Another memorable experience was going with his father to hear a sermon by the elderly Father Lacombe, who had been Louis Riel’s confessor at his execution in 1885.  George Stanley especially enjoyed Banff and the Rockies, where as a boy he spent idyllic, alpine summers.  The West left an indelible impression on him.  As an historian, he went on to pioneer in the writing of prairie history.

George Stanley grew up during the First World War and the Roaring Twenties – a period that witnessed the decline of the British Empire and the emergence of Canada as a truly independent nation.  His career as a soldier began in school.  He was a cadet and later participated in the Canadian Officers Training Corps (COTC) programme.  Dr. Stanley’s father spoke several languages and was determined that his son should be fully bilingual.  Not content with the quality of French that George was learning at school, John Stanley engaged a tutor to teach his son privately.

George Stanley was, as one might expect, a gifted student.  His father frequently found him reading books in the warehouse and soon gave up on the idea of him carrying on the Stanley Paper Company.  Having been dissuaded by his parents from applying to the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, George attended Calgary Normal School (1924-1925), and in the autumn of 1925 entered the combined programme of Arts and Law at the University of Alberta.  The following summer, he taught in a one-room, country school near Hussar.  Although he had planned to article with the Hon. R.B. Bennett, who was a friend of his father, George Stanley’s career took a different path.  He came under the tutelage of historian A.L. Burt, who taught at the U. of A. and was a graduate of Oxford University.  Upon Burt’s recommendation, George applied for a Rhodes Scholarship and was selected for the province of Alberta in 1929.

Oxford was one of the defining experiences in George Stanley’s life.  His time in England gave him a much stronger sense of being a Canadian.  But he also felt enormous gratitude for the privilege of doing his graduate work at one of Europe’s finest universities.  At Oxford, George Stanley earned four degrees, was awarded Beit and Royal Society of Canada scholarships, and wrote his first and arguably most important book, The Birth of Western Canada, which was published in 1936 by Longmans Green in London.  Social life and sporting activities were also considered important aspects of a well-rounded Oxford education.  George Stanley particularly enjoyed playing for the University’s Ice Hockey Club, which consisted of Canadians.  They travelled throughout Europe and in 1931 won the prestigious Spengler Cup.  Several years ago, during the centennial of the annual Oxford-Cambridge hockey competition, it gave him particular pleasure to become Honorary Captain of his old Oxford team.  Oxford’s victory over Cambridge that year made the occasion all the happier.

A few of you here today will recall Dr. Stanley’s arrival at Mount Allison, fresh (and perhaps a little brash) from Oxford in 1936.  He often said how fortunate he was to get a teaching job during the Depression.  There were only two vacant university positions in his field in all of Canada that year.  Besides his busy history lecturing schedule at Mt. A., Stanley taught French and fencing, gave numerous talks to local service organizations, and helped revive the COTC.  He received a commission in the New Brunswick Rangers in 1938 and, with the advent of war, soon found himself training soldiers in Fredericton.  He always said that the Army was the best graduate school in the world.

In 1940, Captain Stanley was assigned to Canadian Military Headquarters in London, England, to serve as Deputy Director of the Historical Section.  Working out of an office beside Canada House on Trafalgar Square, Stanley was responsible for gathering reports on Canadian military activities for the writing of the official history of Canada’s involvement in World War II.  He was also in charge of the Canadian War Artists, who included Bruno Bobak, Alex Colville, Charles Comfort, Lawren Harris Jr., and Molly Lamb.  The War did not increase Stanley’s lukewarm affection for London, but it did give him an intimate understanding of how the military functioned – from the frontlines to HQ.  Like many of his generation, he was haunted for the rest of his life by the horrors he had seen in war.

In 1945, Lieutenant-Colonel Stanley returned to Canada to run the Army’s Historical Section in Ottawa.  There he met and fell in love with Ruth Hill, who had recently taken the Gold Medal in law at McGill University and begun practicing in Montreal.  They were married in 1946.  George decided to retire from the Army and join the faculty of the University of British Columbia.  There he became the first full-time professor of Canadian history in Canada.

In 1949, Professor Stanley began a twenty-year stint as head of the History Department at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario.  In 1962, he was also appointed RMC’s first Dean of Arts and had the enviable opportunity of building an arts faculty from scratch.  As a teacher, Dr. Stanley could, by his own admission, be somewhat imperious and exacting; he demanded much of his students because of his dedication to excellence.  He demanded even more of himself.  But he was also a compassionate and innovative mentor.  When one RMC student became seriously ill and ran the risk of losing his year, Dr. Stanley personally tutored him in hospital; that cadet has since had a brilliant career as a cancer researcher.  When there was no textbook for Dr. Stanley’s Canadian military history course – the first such course ever given in Canada – he wrote one.  When he wanted his students to understand the intricacies of 18^th-century warfare, he taught them how to use cumbersome, vintage muskets.  Stanley loved teaching.  Many of his students at RMC went on to become leading academics and senior staff officers in this country.

The years in Kingston, Ontario, were hectic, both professionally and personally.  The three girls were born and began their schooling.  Both George and Ruth were involved in numerous community activities.  Through the Kingston Historical Society, for instance, they worked at the forefront with friends, such as Col. Louis Flynn and Dr. Arthur Lower, to help preserve Kingston’s fine architectural heritage.  And while George served as a founding member of the Archaeological and Historic Sites Board of Ontario, the whole family participated in historical plaque unveilings across Eastern Ontario.  The year 1965 was very special for the family, because George’s design for the new Canadian Red and White Maple Leaf Flag was adopted by Parliament.  Just before the official flag raising in February, the RCMP received a death threat against Dr. Stanley’s life.  Undaunted, he attended the ceremony on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, dressed conspicuously in a Hudson’s Bay coat.

Life is full of surprising twists.  In 1969, Professor Stanley was invited back to Mount Allison to establish the first undergraduate programme in Canadian Studies at a Canadian university.  The ties with Sackville had never really lapsed.  During their years in Kingston, the Stanleys had spent most summers at Rayworth Beach near Port Elgin.  They took up residence at Frosty Hollow, fox terrier and all, and were soon active in Sackville life.  Besides directing the new Canadian Studies programme full-time, George Stanley also served for three years on the Commission de Planification Académique de l’Université de Moncton.  After his retirement from Mt. A. in 1975, Dr. Stanley became heavily involved in community service, particularly fund raising for St. John Ambulance.  He also researched and wrote his history of the War of 1812, which was published in 1983 and is still considered, even by American scholars, to be the best study of that conflict.  Like all his books, it reflects his strong, personal connection to Canada’s history.  In the front of that volume you will find a Gaelic dedication to his great-grandfather, who carried water to the soldiers wounded at the Battle of Crysler’s Farm in 1813.

In 1982, at the age of 75, Dr. Stanley unhesitatingly answered “yes” when Prime Minister Trudeau asked him to serve as New Brunswick’s Lieutenant-Governor.  He took up his term at Government House with all the dedication he had shown throughout every other phase of his career.  He insisted on writing all his own speeches and made a point of attending functions in every part of the province.  He was also appointed Honorary Colonel of the 1RNBR Regiment, a position he treasured.  The mid-1980s were a festive and very busy time as New Brunswickers marked their bicentennial.  During those years, eminent visitors from around the world also came to help New Brunswick celebrate.  The Stanleys, with their strong sense of tradition and their comfortable manner with people from all walks of life, proved well suited to their role.  They may have represented the Queen, but they served the people of New Brunswick.

In 1987, shortly after George’s 80^th birthday, the Stanleys returned to Sackville.  Here he continued to research, write, review, and participate in national, provincial and community activities.  He also encouraged younger scholars, and seemed astonished that some of them were even interested in assessing his own contributions to Canadian historiography.  Despite lobbying from many quarters, he resisted the temptation to write his memoirs.  It was not his style.  Although his career was full of remarkable accomplishments, events and people, he was at heart a discreet, private man, who was content to reflect quietly on his life and tell his stories to familiar ears, just as his father had done years earlier in Calgary.

What, then, is George Stanley’s legacy?  The historian, R.C. [Rod] Macleod of the University of Alberta, has written that:  “Much of English Canada’s understanding of the formative years of the Canadian West comes from George Stanley’s remarkable work, The Birth of Western Canada.  Considering that it was one of the earliest works by an academically trained historian in this country, it has stood the test of time remarkably well.  No other work of Canadian history published before the Second World War is as regularly read by historians, students and the general public….  [This] subject will always be identified with his name.”

Despite his impressive accomplishments as an historian, which include a definitive biography of Louis Riel and the general editorship of the five volumes of Riel’s papers, it is for the design of the Canadian Flag that most Canadians will remember George Stanley.  Among Canadian school children, he is a much-loved hero and role model.  During the past decade and a half, he was often invited to visit classrooms, and he received numerous letters, cards and drawings from students across the country.  One of his most prized possessions was a plasticine flag sent to him by a child.  Perhaps these young admirers also liked the fact that he retained his love of learning and his youthful wonder about life and its possibilities.

In his final years, however, it was not his many professional accomplishments that brought George Stanley the greatest satisfaction.  It was the simple pleasures of family life.  He still enjoyed travel, but was never happier than when sitting in his sun room and contemplating the beauty of Silver Lake, with his family nearby.  On his 91^st birthday, when he successfully blew out all the candles, his youngest daughter, Laurie, remarked that he would get his wish; he smiled, turned to Ruth, and said, “I got my wish many years ago.”  George Stanley would have been the first to say that Ruth, his beloved soulmate of 56 years, had been the greatest blessing of his life.  Because of her, everything else had been possible.

George Stanley was a man of many dimensions.  Most of us knew only small parts of his public, professional and private life.  Today, each of us has personal, cherished memories of him.  We give thanks for his life and what we have shared with him.

In conclusion, I should like to read a brief passage from “The Making of an Historian,” an essay published by Professor Stanley in 1994:  “Do I regret having chosen history as my life’s work?  Not at all.  After a lifetime, I know the limitations of my discipline.  I know that it does not reveal the whole meaning of life.  All it does, is to let loose a few fire-fly flares of illumination, provide a few vague answers to the eternal “why”.  But that is better than utter darkness….  Fragmentary as our vision of the past and the passing scene may be, that vision is better than no vision at all.  History is the record of man’s life on this planet; as such I believe that it holds the secret, not perhaps of man’s soul, but surely of his humanity.  Can the meaning of man’s existence be found outside history?  History and man exist together.  When history shall stand still in time, then, and only then, will there be an end to man and history.”

George Stanley was an honorable man, a distinguished scholar and gifted teacher, a devoted husband, loving father and grandfather, and a proud Canadian.  True to his family motto, Sans Changer, he steadfastly gave his best to community, profession, family and country.  We will all miss his presence in our lives, but will continue to be inspired by how he lived his life.  What finer legacy could anyone leave?

John D. Blackwell

St. Paul’s Anglican Church, Sackville, NB

16 September 2002