Child of the Fifties

In this lively and engaging memoir, Ken Dewar explores what it was like to come of age in Canada in the 1950s, and how his upbringing in Edmonton, Alberta, in those years influenced his later life and work. His father, Max, was a well-known architect, first with the City of Edmonton and later in his own practice, whose best-known creation was perhaps the "new" Edmonton City Hall. Sadly, Max Dewar died of a heart attack before the building's completion: "Looking back on my childhood and youth," the author writes, "it seems obvious that my father's death in 1955 marked a watershed. It was momentous at the time, of course, but its significance in my life became more apparent as the years went by."

After completing his undergraduate degree at the University of Alberta, Dewar went on to earn his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. Highlights of his time there included the Toronto International Teach-in, a combined protest event-conference that drew more than five thousand attendees, as well as a visit to the USSR. After teaching at the University of Victoria, he left academe to open a bookstore in Elora, Ontario. "What turned out to be an interlude in the book trade had two specific benefits.... One was that I returned to university inoculated by my time in the 'real world' against the inward gaze that is the chief occupational hazard of academic work.... I also think my immersion in business and in the life of a small community moderated my politics. The demands of meeting a bottom line and serving customers, and of participating in organizing committees that drew on a wide range of personalities and resources showed how important it is to understand another point of view, to negotiate, and to compromise in arriving at solutions to problems."

After five years, however, the financial challenges of running a bookstore in a small town led to a return to university life and eventually a position at Mount Saint Vincent in Halifax, in time to play an important role in the expansion and revitalization of the university and its history department in the final decades of the twentieth century.

Dewar recounts his life with verve and discernment. Both those who lived through these decades themselves and those born long since will find much to enjoy in Child of the Fifties.