James Eayrs

• James George Eayrs

James George Eayrs, academic, historian, and public intellectual, was born in London, England, on October 13, 1926, to E.K. Wild, an American businessman, and Dora Whitefield Wild. In 1930 his mother married Hugh Eayrs, president of the publishing firm, Macmillan of Canada, and the family moved to Canada. He attended Upper Canada College and Lakefield College School and served in the Royal Canadian Navy during the waning days of World War II before continuing his studies at Trinity College. He graduated in 1948 and obtained his PhD at Columbia University in 1954.

Eayrs’ first academic appointment was at United College, University of Manitoba in 1951. After a year as a Lecturer, he assumed a similar position at the University of Toronto in the Department of Political Economy. He remained at the University of Toronto, becoming a full professor in 1963, until 1980, when he became the Eric Dennis Memorial Professor of Government and Political Science at Dalhousie University. He retired in 1992.

Eayrs was research assistant in 1953-54 to R. MacGregor Dawson, who was writing a biography of William Lyon Mackenzie King, and was one of the first to have access to King’s papers. Soon after, he assisted Vincent Massey with his memoirs. In 1959, Eayrs published his first book, number nine in a series entitled Canada in World Affairs, which was published by the Canadian Institute of International Affairs. At this time, he also became co-editor, with Robert Spencer, of the CIIA’s International Journal, a position he kept until 1984. In 1961 he published The Art of the Possible; Government and Foreign Policy in Canada and Northern Approaches: Canada and the Search for Peace, the latter being a collection of commentaries. Between 1965 and 1983, Eayrs published five books under the series title In Defense of Canada that covered Canadian national security policy from the end of the First World War through the Vietnam War. In 1968 he collected commentaries originally published as columns for the Family Herald under the title Minutes of the Sixties. Another compilation volume, Diplomacy and its Discontents, came out a few years later, and Greenpeace and her Enemies, another collection of newspaper columns and essays, came out in 1973. Between teaching, writing and researching books, and commentating on world events in syndicated newspaper columns, Eayrs also published often in scholarly journals, participated in academic conferences, was a guest on television shows, and hosted CBC Weekend for a time in the early 1970’s

Professor Eayrs was a Senior Fellow at Massey College and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (1965). He received a NATO research fellowship (1965-66), a Guggenheim fellowship (1967-68), a Killam senior research fellowship (1972-74), A Connaught fellowship (1978-79), and a New Zealand Universities Commonwealth prestige fellowship (1987). In 1984 he received the Albert B. Corey award of the Canadian and American Historical Associations, and the Molson Prize. In 1985 he become an officer of the Order of Canada.

He was also a serious collector of art, building a substantial collection that contained works by David Milne, Milton Avery, George Grosz, and many others, beginning in the 1950’s.

James Eayrs married Elizabeth Lofft (Head of St. Hilda’s, 4T9) in 1950. They purchased a home in the High Park area of Toronto in 1956 and it was their home base for the rest of their lives. Never owning a car, James Eayrs travelled through the city by bicycle. Elizabeth Eayrs was a Toronto alderman from 1972 to 1978. The couple had five children, Jonathan, Betsy, Susanna, James and Emily. James Eayrs was predeceased by his son James in 1998. He died on February 6, 2020, at his home in Toronto. Elizabeth Eayrs died in 2023.