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History
Harold I. Nelson was born in 1919 in Brantford Ontario. After graduating with a B.A. in Modern History from the University of Toronto in 1941, he attended Cornell University where he obtained his Masters in 1942. Upon graduating, he briefly worked for Massey-Harris before taking up a position with the Department of External Affairs in Ottawa, where he worked from 1943-1945. From 1945-47, he was Public Education Secretary of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs (C.I.I.A.) and then went off to pursue his doctoral studies in International Relations and Law at Columbia University from which he graduated with a Ph.D. in 1959. Throughout this decade, his association with the C.I.I.A. continued. He was editor of its main publication, International Journal from 1952-1959.
Prof. Nelson’s career at the University of Toronto started in 1949 when he was hired as a lecturer in the Department of History. He rose through the ranks to full professor by 1964. After his retirement in 1984, he continued to teach and research into the 1990s. Throughout his career, he sat on various committees and consultative boards especially in the Department of History. His most important administrative position was that of Chair of the International Studies Program (I.S.P.) from 1971-1976. Prior to this appointment, he was chair of the International Relations Committee of I.S.P.
Prof. Nelson taught both graduate and undergraduate courses in Modern European history. His specialty was modern international history with a focus on peacemaking, conflict and cooperation in reference to the First World War and Anglo Russian Relations. His only book, Land and Power: British and Allied Policy on Germany’s Frontiers, 1916-1919, published in 1963 won the American Historical Society’s George Lewis Beer Prize. Prof. Nelson received a Nuffield Fellowship in 1956-60 in order to do research on the book.
Upon his retirement in 1984, he was appointed Professor Emeritus. For the next decade, he continued to teach and do research. Throughout most of the 1990s to 2004, he worked on a second book relating to the trial of a British women charged and found guilty of sedition in Russia in 1912. This book was never completed. Prof. Harold Nelson died on March 12 2007 at the age of 87.