The regional character of Canada and the crucial role of metropolitan development in its history have been recurring themes in the work of J.M.S. Careless. In these essays he returns to those themes, discussing how national and regional identity in Canada show vital links with metropolitan-hinterland relationship across time and space.

The first essay presents an overall appraisal of the historic connections between metropolitan centres and frontiers or regions in Canada. These connections might be manifested in economic structures, political fabrics, or social networks, and also in modes of opinion and popular images and traditions. The second part of the book inquires into some major conceptual treatments given to frontier and metropolis in history. The third seeks to evaluate the impact of metropolitanism on distinctive features of identity that are revealed in Canadian historical experience. A fourth essays rounds out the volume by discussing the influence of external metropolanism in Canada.

Careless endows his subject with the combined fornce of his own continuing research, his sensitivity to the new historical scholarship, and the lively and penetrating mind that have made him one of Canada's leading historians for more than thirty years.

J.M.S. Careless, University Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, was for many years Chairman of the Department of History. His historical research and writing have brought him many awards. In 1953, he won the Governor General's Award for Canada: A Story of Challenge, and in 1963 the same award for his two volume biography of George Brown, Brown of the Globe (reprinted by Dundurn Press in 1989). In 1985 he received the City of Toronto Book Award for Toronto to 1918. He holds honourary doctorates from seven universities. In 1981 he was created an Officer of Canada and in 1987 an Officer in the Order of Ontario.

J.M.S. Careless has been active in many historical societies and agencies. He has served as President of the Ontario Historical Society and the Canadian Historical Associations as well as being the Chair of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada and Chair of the Historical committee of the Ontario Heritage Foundation.

In 199 many of Professor Careless's former students and other colleagues contributed studies of their own to Old Ontario, Essays in Honour of J.M.S. Careless (Dundun Press) as a tribute.

J.M.S. Careless' profile page