Simpson, George

Simpson, George, b 24 March 1893 in Chatsworth, Ontario, d 6 March 1969 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Historian and civic figure; full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society from 1948 and of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in Canada. After studying at the University of Saskatchewan (1919), the University of Toronto (1920), and the University of London he became a lecturer in history at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon in 1922 (professor in 1928, department head in 1940). Simpson developed a considerable empathy for Ukrainians, through his contacts with them in the 1920s, which led him to learn the Ukrainian language and to organize the first department of Slavic studies at a Canadian university, in Saskatoon in 1945. He edited an English translation of Dmytro Doroshenko’s History of the Ukraine (1939), prepared a series of radio broadcasts in 1939 on the Ukrainian question, and wrote several items about Ukrainian history, including a historical atlas of Ukraine (1941). He was an adviser to public officials in Canada on Ukrainian matters and a participant (together with Vladimir Kaye-Kysilewsky and Tracy Philipps) in the negotiations leading to the formation of the Ukrainian Canadian Committee (now Ukrainian Canadian Congress).

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]