Desmond Morton (historian)

Morton's widow Gael Eakin, to whom he was married for 20 years, announced that he died on September 4, 2019, six days short of his 82nd birthday.

In 1996, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada. Morton was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1985.

Morton was the Hiram Mills Professor of History at McGill University, as well as the founding director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, established in 1994, in Montreal, Quebec. Following his retirement, he continued to serve at McGill as a professor emeritus. Prior to that, he was Principal of Erindale College, University of Toronto, from 1986 to 1994. He served as president of the Canadian Historical Association from 1978-1979.

Morton was the author of over thirty-five books on Canada, including the popular A Short History of Canada. In 1994 he won the C.P. Stacey Prize for his history of Canadian soldiers during the First World War, When Your Number's Up. He wrote prolifically about the First World War, considering it of great importance in Canadian history. He once wrote: "For Canadians, Vimy Ridge was a nation-building experience. For some, then and later, it symbolized the fact that the Great War was also Canada's war of independence".

Before beginning his teaching career, Morton served as an advisor to Tommy Douglas of the New Democratic Party. From 1964 to 1966, he served as assistant secretary of the Ontario New Democratic Party. After the success of the famous 1964 NDP Riverdale by-election, Morton wrote and published The Riverdale Story, which detailed how the party's organizing and canvassing changed the way campaigns in Canada are run. In the 1970s he worked with David Lewis, Stephen Lewis, and other party leaders to oppose The Waffle, a left-wing faction within the NDP. In the 1980s he informally advised Brian Mulroney of the Progressive Conservatives.

Desmond Dillon Paul Morton OC CD FRSC (1937–2019) was a Canadian historian and political advisor who specialized in the history of the Canadian military, as well as the history of Canadian political and industrial relations.

Born on September 10, 1937, in Calgary, Alberta, Morton was the son of a Brigadier General, and the grandson of General Sir William Dillon Otter. A Rhodes Scholar at Keble College, Oxford, Morton was a graduate of the Collège militaire royal de St-Jean, the Royal Military College of Canada, and the London School of Economics. He received his doctorate from the University of London. He spent ten years in the Canadian Army (1954–1964 retiring as a Captain) prior to beginning his teaching career. He was named Honorary Colonel of 8 Wing of the Canadian Air Force at CFB Trenton in 2002. He received the Canadian Forces Decoration in 2004 for 12 years total military service.