Fonds 1635 - Ian C. Parker fonds

Ian Cronyn Parker (1945-2017) was a political economist and professor at the University of Toronto, born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. His work centred on Marxist economics and the influence of communication media on economic development, and he was closely affiliated with the Harold Innis school of thought.

After leaving Winnipeg, Parker received a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from the University of Waterloo before attending the University of Toronto, where he received a Master of Economics and English in 1968. During this degree, his studies focused on the work of seventeenth-century English poet Andrew Marvell. As a volunteer with Canadian University Service Overseas (CUSO), he worked with the National Development Corporation of Tanzania for three years. He then pursued a PhD in Economics at Yale, submitting of his thesis Studies in the Economics of Communication in 1977. Parker began teaching in the Economics Department at the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC) campus shortly thereafter in 1981, where he continued until his retirement in 2016. He regularly taught courses on the history of economic theory and thought, and on Marxist economics. Parker has stated that he considered teaching his “true calling” (“Ian Cronyn Parker.” Dignity Memorial. March 2017).

Parker authored numerous publications as both a student and a professor, ranging from reports for the Government of Manitoba, conducted during his master’s degree at U of T, to several editions of the textbook Microeconomics and Behaviour in the 2010s. Much of his work focused on specific research interests such as Keynes's theory of probability in relation to economics, the economics of the Internet, and implications of fixed capital for the economics of communications systems. Later in his career, from the early 2000s until his retirement, he returned to writing predominantly about Andrew Marvell and early modern poetry.

Parker had been a student and friend of William Thomas James Easterbrook, an influential chairman of the U of T Department of Political Economy and protegé of Harold Innis. Prior to his passing, Easterbrook had been working on a book, North American Patterns of Growth and Development: A Continental Approach. Parker adopted Easterbrook’s manuscript and acted as editor to publish this project posthumously in 1990.

The ways in which the creators of archival records identify themselves and are identified by others is a key contextual aspect of understanding their perspectives and approach. Ian C. Parker identified as a Caucasian, heterosexual man of Scottish and English descent. This information has been sourced from Parker’s partner.