Irene Spry
Encyclopedia
Irene Mary Spry, OC
(née Biss: Standerton
, Transvaal, South Africa
, August 28, 1907 - Ottawa
, Canada
, 1998) was an economic historian
and social democrat
awarded two honorary doctorates and named to the Order of Canada
for her contributions to Canadian intellectual and public life.
(1924-25) and later obtained a graduate degree in economics at Girton College (1925-28) of the University of Cambridge
, England
, where she had been a student of J.M. Keynes
, A.C. Pigou
, D.H. Robertson and M. Dobb
. This was followed by further studies for a Masters degree (1928-29) in Social Research and Social Work at Bryn Mawr College
, Pennsylvania
, U.S.A.
in 1929 where she collaborated with the late H.A. Innis
and taught Canadian economic history. Her marriage in 1938 to the late Graham Spry
, and subsequent births of their three children, Robin
, Richard and Lib, interrupted her academic career. However, during World War II
she did serve actively on the Wartime Prices and Trade Board and its later affiliate, the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation, in Ottawa and, during the early postwar years, went to England and co-founded Saskatchewan House with her husband, broadcast reformer Graham Spry
, who was Agent-General for Saskatchewan
in London from 1946 to 1967.
Spry's work in the women's movement blossomed during her time in London. She represented the Federated Women's Institutes of Canada
at the Associated Country Women of the World from 1954 to 1967, including service as the group's executive chair from 1959 to 1965. Her formal academic career eventually resumed in 1967, first at the University of Saskatchewan
and finally at the University of Ottawa
in 1968, where she would remain for the rest of her life.
Though officially retiring in 1973, Spry continued to teach courses at Ottawa's Department of Economics until the early 1980s and, indeed, gave lectures in Canadian economic history as recently as 1995. Throughout her retirement years, she maintained a strong intellectual presence at the University of Ottawa
, and could be seen regularly at the National Archives of Canada with a magnifying glass to compensate for her worsening eyesight. Spry met regularly with colleagues and friends who shared her interests in Canadian economic history and public policy and who espoused the social democratic principles that she had relentlessly defended throughout her adult life, beginning with her membership in the League for Social Reconstruction
in the 1930s. Moreover, she had an exceptional knowledge of the economic and social problems of countries other than Canada
, notably of Europe
.
, published respectively in 1963 and 1968, which were then followed by her research on the records of the Department of the Interior regarding Canada’s western frontier of settlement, published in 1993.
In addition to Spry's authoritative work on the Palliser Expedition, her research on how the Canadian prairies transitioned from a commons to open access resources and, finally, to private property helped extend a branch of work often well-known even beyond the disciplines of economics and history, for instance in the prominence given Innis
and the staples thesis
in Canadian communications thought. Spry's comparison of the loss of the commons in England to the end of First Nations
' communal rights, in particular, would echo much subsequent research on private intellectual property
in contradistinction to communal resources.
appointed her Officer of the Order of Canada
in 1992 not only for her long and inspiring career as writer, teacher and scholar but also for her prominence in the Canadian and international women's movements.
Cameron, Duncan, ed. (1985) Explorations in Canadian Economic History: Essays in Honour of Irene M. Spry. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. ISBN 0-7766-3111-X.
Order of Canada
The Order of Canada is a Canadian national order, admission into which is, within the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, the second highest honour for merit...
(née Biss: Standerton
Standerton
Standerton is a large commercial and agricultural town lying on the banks of the Vaal River in Mpumalanga, South Africa which specialises in cattle, dairy, maize and poultry farming. The town was established in 1876 and named after Boer leader Commadant AH Stander. During the Second Boer War a...
, Transvaal, South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
, August 28, 1907 - Ottawa
Ottawa
Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, 1998) was an economic historian
Economic history
Economic history is the study of economies or economic phenomena in the past. Analysis in economic history is undertaken using a combination of historical methods, statistical methods and by applying economic theory to historical situations and institutions...
and social democrat
Social democracy
Social democracy is a political ideology of the center-left on the political spectrum. Social democracy is officially a form of evolutionary reformist socialism. It supports class collaboration as the course to achieve socialism...
awarded two honorary doctorates and named to the Order of Canada
Order of Canada
The Order of Canada is a Canadian national order, admission into which is, within the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, the second highest honour for merit...
for her contributions to Canadian intellectual and public life.
Early years
The daughter of Evan Ebenezer Biss, Inspector of Schools in the Colonial and Indian Service, and Amelia Bagshaw Johnstone, she attended Bournemouth High School.Education
Irene Biss, as she then was, first began her undergraduate training at the London School of EconomicsLondon School of Economics
The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...
(1924-25) and later obtained a graduate degree in economics at Girton College (1925-28) of the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, where she had been a student of J.M. Keynes
John Maynard Keynes
John Maynard Keynes, Baron Keynes of Tilton, CB FBA , was a British economist whose ideas have profoundly affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics, as well as the economic policies of governments...
, A.C. Pigou
Arthur Cecil Pigou
Arthur Cecil Pigou was an English economist. As a teacher and builder of the school of economics at the University of Cambridge he trained and influenced many Cambridge economists who went on to fill chairs of economics around the world...
, D.H. Robertson and M. Dobb
Maurice Dobb
Maurice Herbert Dobb , was a British Marxist economist, and a lecturer 1924-1959 and Reader 1959-1976 at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge 1948-1976.-Life:...
. This was followed by further studies for a Masters degree (1928-29) in Social Research and Social Work at Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College is a women's liberal arts college located in Bryn Mawr, a community in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania, ten miles west of Philadelphia. The name "Bryn Mawr" means "big hill" in Welsh....
, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
, U.S.A.
Career
Spry's formal career as an economic historian began when she joined the Department of Political Economy at the University of TorontoUniversity of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
in 1929 where she collaborated with the late H.A. Innis
Harold Innis
Harold Adams Innis was a Canadian professor of political economy at the University of Toronto and the author of seminal works on media, communication theory and Canadian economic history. The affiliated Innis College at the University of Toronto is named for him...
and taught Canadian economic history. Her marriage in 1938 to the late Graham Spry
Graham Spry
- Further reading :*Babe, Robert. "Graham Spry" in Canadian Communications Thought: Ten Foundational Writers. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-7949-0.*McChesney, Robert W. , Canadian Journal of Communication 24....
, and subsequent births of their three children, Robin
Robin Spry
Robin Spry was a Canadian filmmaker and television producer best known for his documentary film Action: The October Crisis of 1970 about Quebec's October Crisis.-Profile:...
, Richard and Lib, interrupted her academic career. However, during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
she did serve actively on the Wartime Prices and Trade Board and its later affiliate, the Commodity Prices Stabilization Corporation, in Ottawa and, during the early postwar years, went to England and co-founded Saskatchewan House with her husband, broadcast reformer Graham Spry
Graham Spry
- Further reading :*Babe, Robert. "Graham Spry" in Canadian Communications Thought: Ten Foundational Writers. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-7949-0.*McChesney, Robert W. , Canadian Journal of Communication 24....
, who was Agent-General for Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan is a prairie province in Canada, which has an area of . Saskatchewan is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dakota....
in London from 1946 to 1967.
Spry's work in the women's movement blossomed during her time in London. She represented the Federated Women's Institutes of Canada
Federated Women's Institutes of Canada
The Federated Women's Institutes of Canada is an umbrella organization for Women's Institutes in Canada."The idea to form a national group was first considered in 1912. In 1914, however, when the war began the idea was abandoned. At the war's end, it was Miss Mary MacIssac, Superintendent of...
at the Associated Country Women of the World from 1954 to 1967, including service as the group's executive chair from 1959 to 1965. Her formal academic career eventually resumed in 1967, first at the University of Saskatchewan
University of Saskatchewan
The University of Saskatchewan is a Canadian public research university, founded in 1907, and located on the east side of the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. An "Act to establish and incorporate a University for the Province of Saskatchewan" was passed by the...
and finally at the University of Ottawa
University of Ottawa
The University of Ottawa is a bilingual, research-intensive, non-denominational, international university in Ottawa, Ontario. It is one of the oldest universities in Canada. It was originally established as the College of Bytown in 1848 by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate...
in 1968, where she would remain for the rest of her life.
Though officially retiring in 1973, Spry continued to teach courses at Ottawa's Department of Economics until the early 1980s and, indeed, gave lectures in Canadian economic history as recently as 1995. Throughout her retirement years, she maintained a strong intellectual presence at the University of Ottawa
University of Ottawa
The University of Ottawa is a bilingual, research-intensive, non-denominational, international university in Ottawa, Ontario. It is one of the oldest universities in Canada. It was originally established as the College of Bytown in 1848 by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate...
, and could be seen regularly at the National Archives of Canada with a magnifying glass to compensate for her worsening eyesight. Spry met regularly with colleagues and friends who shared her interests in Canadian economic history and public policy and who espoused the social democratic principles that she had relentlessly defended throughout her adult life, beginning with her membership in the League for Social Reconstruction
League for Social Reconstruction
The League for Social Reconstruction was a circle of Canadian socialist intellectuals officially formed in 1932, though it had its beginnings during a camping retreat in 1931. These academics were advocating radical social and economic reforms and political education. Industrialization,...
in the 1930s. Moreover, she had an exceptional knowledge of the economic and social problems of countries other than Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, notably of Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
.
Research
Professor Emeritus Spry died in her Ottawa home peacefully on December 16, 1998, at the age of 91. Her most recent book on the early economic history of Western Canada, entitled From the Hunt to the Homestead, was at the time due to be co-published by the University of Alberta and University of Calgary Presses. This latter work would largely have completed a line of research on Western Canadian economic history that began with her first two major books on the Palliser ExpeditionPalliser Expedition
The British North American Exploring Expedition, commonly called the Palliser Expedition, explored and surveyed the open prairies and rugged wilderness of western Canada from 1857 to 1860. The purpose was to explore possible routes for the Canadian Pacific Railway and discover new species of plants...
, published respectively in 1963 and 1968, which were then followed by her research on the records of the Department of the Interior regarding Canada’s western frontier of settlement, published in 1993.
In addition to Spry's authoritative work on the Palliser Expedition, her research on how the Canadian prairies transitioned from a commons to open access resources and, finally, to private property helped extend a branch of work often well-known even beyond the disciplines of economics and history, for instance in the prominence given Innis
Harold Innis
Harold Adams Innis was a Canadian professor of political economy at the University of Toronto and the author of seminal works on media, communication theory and Canadian economic history. The affiliated Innis College at the University of Toronto is named for him...
and the staples thesis
Staples thesis
The staples thesis is a theory of Canadian economic development. The theory “has its origins in research into Canadian social, political, and economic history carried out in Canadian universities…by members of what were then known as departments of political economy.” From these groups of...
in Canadian communications thought. Spry's comparison of the loss of the commons in England to the end of First Nations
First Nations
First Nations is a term that collectively refers to various Aboriginal peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis. There are currently over 630 recognised First Nations governments or bands spread across Canada, roughly half of which are in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. The...
' communal rights, in particular, would echo much subsequent research on private intellectual property
Intellectual property
Intellectual property is a term referring to a number of distinct types of creations of the mind for which a set of exclusive rights are recognized—and the corresponding fields of law...
in contradistinction to communal resources.
- Spry, Irene M. (1963) The Palliser Expedition: The Dramatic Story of Western Canadian Exploration, 1857-1860. Toronto: MacMillan. Republished Toronto: Fifth House Publishers, 1995. ISBN 1-895618-52-5.
- Spry, Irene M., ed. (1968) The Papers of the Palliser Expedition, 1857-1860. Toronto: Champlain Society Press. ISBN 0-7766-3008-3.
- Crabbé, Philippe, and Irene M. Spry, eds. (1973) Natural Resource Development in Canada. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. ISBN 0-7766-3008-3.
- Spry, Irene M., and Bennett McCardle. (1993) The Records of the Department of the Interior and Research Concerning Canada's Western Frontier of Settlement. Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center. ISBN 0-88977-061-1.
Honours
Among many and varied honours, Irene Mary Spry received honorary doctorates from the University of Toronto (1971) and University of Ottawa (1985). The latter degree was conferred at the same time that a book in her honour entitled Explorations in Canadian Economic History was presented to her. The Governor General of CanadaGovernor General of Canada
The Governor General of Canada is the federal viceregal representative of the Canadian monarch, Queen Elizabeth II...
appointed her Officer of the Order of Canada
Order of Canada
The Order of Canada is a Canadian national order, admission into which is, within the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, the second highest honour for merit...
in 1992 not only for her long and inspiring career as writer, teacher and scholar but also for her prominence in the Canadian and international women's movements.
Further reading
Babe, Robert. (2000) "Irene Spry" in Canadian Communications Thought: Ten Foundational Writers. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-7949-0.Cameron, Duncan, ed. (1985) Explorations in Canadian Economic History: Essays in Honour of Irene M. Spry. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. ISBN 0-7766-3111-X.