Cole Harris: Geographer of Canada

Cole Harris's formidable scholarly promise was evident early.In an invited paper for a special centenary issue of The Canadian Geographerhis first in this journal-in 1967, he described Canadian historical geography as a sparsely tilled field (Harris, 1967).Barely thirty years old, already writing a now familiar spare, crystalline prose intended (he often said) to achieve maximum clarity with minimum words, Cole claimed that "the land" was geography's central object of inquiry.He also identified potential research topics deemed "worthy" by the interest that they would arouse.That took chutzpah.Cole was always supremely confident in his intellectual judgement, though never given to arrogance, pretension, or self-promotion.He was a scholar's scholar, driven by ideas.When you told him something he listened with almost frightening intensity.Bending his head slightly towards you, eyes off to the distance, he focussed on your every word.It often seemed that whatever you said fell short of what his concentrated effort demanded.Richard Colebrook (Cole) Harris was born in Vancouver on the 4 th of July, 1936.This was a cause of mild chagrin for a proud Canadian.Though he was never a thoughtless nationalist, it would surely have been more appropriate for him to share a "natal day" with the country he held dear.Cole's father, Richard (Dick) Harris, was a high school teacher, and his mother, Ellen (nee Code) Harris, a CBC radio show host.After taking a BA in Geography and History from the University of British Columbia (UBC) (1954)(1955)(1956)(1957)(1958), where he was also president of the United Nations Club and ran track, Cole spent the better part of a year in Montpellier, improving his French.In autumn 1959 he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.There he completed a PhD under the supervision of the Canadian historical geographer Andrew H. Clark, who steered him to work on early (French) Canada on the strength of his recently polished language skills.After a temporary lectureship in Geography at UBC (1963)(1964), during which he and Muriel Watney were married in Vancouver, Cole was appointed Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Toronto.In 1971, he and Muriel, a medical geneticist with a doctorate from Toronto, returned to Vancouver, largely for family reasons.Thirty years later, Cole retired Professor Emeritus.He died at home on September 26, 2022.His mind and his concern for Canada never flagged.His son, Douglas, wrote that even on his last morning when he lost the ability to speak, "the hand gestures he was making in bed … [suggested] he was in full flight again, helping us to see and understand the country."Quebec, the subject of Cole's first book, was fundamental to that understanding.Published in 1966, The seigneurial system in early Canada (Harris, 1966) was a bold, even brash, revisionist study.It argued that everyday life along the St Lawrence had been less influenced by the seigneurial system than historians generally believed.French feudalism was old and effete at the beginning of the 17 th century.Although its legal

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