In Memoriam - Dr. Ian MacPherson

Dr. Ian Macpherson, long-time member of the History Department, as well as former Chair of the Department and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, passed away on Saturday, November 16th.   He was 74.

Ian joined the History Department in 1976.  He was an eminent Canadian historian of the rural Prairie West and had a long and extremely distinguished career working on both historical and contemporary issues relating to co-operatives, both in Canada and around the world.   In 2000 Ian founded the B.C. Institute for Co-operative Studies at UVic (now the Centre for Co-operative and Community-Based Economy), and served as Director of the Centre from 2000 to 2008.  The Centre became a prime source of scholarly material as well as support for practitioners in co-operative undertaking.  Ian was also very active in the co-op movement both in Canada and internationally, and took a leading role in creating the Canadian Co-operative Association, was the co-founder of CASC (the Canadian Association for the Study of Co-operation), and chair of the International Co-operative Alliance committee that revised the co-operative principles in 1995.

Ian was a kind and compassionate man, an exceptional teacher and mentor, a wise leader, a distinguished scholar and a model of a community-engaged academic.  He will be much missed.