My Memorable History Professors

PROFESSOR EDWARD INGRAM

I was overjoyed to be admitted into Professor Edward Ingram’s “British India” class. Professor Ingram was an actor-historian, with an eye for the dramatic. He would occasionally sweep into class, majestically, in his Oxford gown and cap. Even better, he had no standard textbooks for his class. Instead, we read a range of literature relating to British India – Kipling, Maugham, Forster, Orwell and more. It was my pleasing introduction to inter-disciplinary studies.

Even today, I use poetry and songs in class. The range of war poetry is vast and heart-rending. Read it with the appropriate music – try “In Flander’s Field” – and wait for the effects. When teaching about Nazi Germany, or militarist Japan, or the imposing strut of America, my students learn their respective national anthems of the time. The lyrics can be sung, or even studied as “source-based questions.”

Ingram’s own circumstances in life explain to some extent his penchant for defending the British Empire against her vehement opponents. He was born at the twilight of the Raj, in 1940, in Calcutta, India. In class, he once asked my good friend Ron Prasad (Indo-Canadian, whose father came from Fiji) where he was born. “Vancuuuver” – was the Canadian accented reply. To which Ingram retorted – “Oh, then you’re not really INDIAN, are you?! Well, I was born in Calcutta. I am the real Indian!”

Professor Ingram’s class was fun, mentally stimulating and very very energizing. We were always on edge for the unexpected, even trenchant statements of objective truth, such as “What is the significance of Adela Quested’s crisis in the Malabar Caves? – It’s ….NOTHING! Just Nothing!!” (when discussing A Passage to India)

With great agony, we later understood that what he meant was that nothing had occurred in the blackness of the caves. Adela Quested had merely imagined a crisis of molestation out of fear. Nothing actually happened. She simply conjured up the crisis, which was instantly exploited by the colonial society to condemn base native instincts and justify continued imperial rule.

I was flattered when Professor Ingram awarded me with an A grade for my essay in his class. It was titled “The Illusion and the Code.” I argued that the Code of the Pukka Sahib (white man’s code) sustained the Empire. But it was an illusion. When members of the ruling elite broke the Code, the illusion of permanence was threatened. Professor Ingram liked my essay enough to reject my request to do an Honours thesis with him. “Don’t waste your time with an Honours thesis.” He glared warmly. “Do your Masters degree with me.” I accepted his kind offer.

PROFESSOR PHILIP “PIP” STIGGER

The second professor I enjoyed was Philip Stigger. He was an ex-British army officer who did his national service fighting the Mau-Mau in Kenya in the 1960s. Fittingly, he taught us African history. I loved his first-hand stories of fighting in the bush and will always remember the twist of his lip as he scowled at how he always only had “bully-beef” for food. I discovered the power of personal anecdotes.

Like Ingram, “Pip” Stigger was a child of the Empire. Read this description of his life, taken from the History Department website of SFU:

Stigger’s interest in the relationship between military power, economics, social change, and constitutional development reflects his background. Born at the Royal Tank Corps depot in 1932, taken to British India, and exposed briefly to Black Africa at Mombasa as World War II broke out, he developed an interest in Eastern and Southern Africa, causing him to seek a B.A. (Hons) from Bristol. After military service in the Egyptian Canal Area (General Service Medal 1916-1962), on finding difficulty in comprehending Black African events without deep direct exposure, he went to Tanganyika as an Administrative Officer in 1958. He left Tanzania in 1965 in order to take up an appointment at Simon Fraser from 2 July. There, he worked with Allan Cunningham, Peter Kup and, more closely, David Ross, to introduce graduate and undergraduate students to the complexities of Third World issues, focussing on East and Central Africa, especially Tanzania and Zimbabwe. He was retired in 1997, and is a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medallist.

It was a life as colourful as his teaching style. He looked the part of a retired soldier - doggedly measured, unflappable and very self-assured. He paced up and down the class as if waiting for the rascally local insurgents to pounce on him. But all he received were the terrified glances of his African history undergraduates who knew better than to trifle with – an ex-British soldier who had fought in Kenya.

We all enjoyed his stories and anecdotes, even if we dared not admit it. It was exciting stuff to hear of his military escapades, fighting the ……. Yes. But beyond the entertainment value, I came to understand that history was about people and their lives. Not about theories. I’d later come to appreciate the theoretical approaches a historian required to adopt in order to interpret sources and construct explanations. But there was value in a story. It made the past personal. “Real” historians evince this, I know, but stories make history (shudder) “come alive.” The academic cringes, but the common man’s eyes light up at tales of heroism, courage, fortitude and sacrifice. As John Lukacs would have argued, in his The Future of History, even history professors must be reminded who their real audience should be – the general public, and not just the elite clique of university academics.

Everyone likes a good yarn, preferably first-hand, otherwise, any-hand. We all pepper our history lessons with stories galore. Heard the one about Hitler’s private outburst after an important (clue: Munich) conference? – “If ever that silly old man comes interfering here again with his umbrella, I'll kick him downstairs and jump on his stomach in front of the photographers.” Hitler later declared: “Thank God we have no umbrella politicians in this country.”

PROFESSOR IAN DYCK

Professor Ian Dyck, my third role-model, was a rising young star in academia. Irwin, the young history teacher in Alan Bennett’s 2004 play-movie The History Boys, reminds me of him. On the very first day in class, he entered the room with a tall stack of books in his hands.

For the next half-hour, he picked up each book, turn by turn, made some comment about each one, before moving on to the next. Every book was on the same general subject, “The Victorian Era,” but each, it seemed, was so different from the other. This one, he would say, was written by a socialist. This one, a collection of diary accounts. That huge tome – written 50 years after the era. This other one – right wing journalist. And so on. Without realising it, I had imbibed a cardinal lesson as a budding historian, that no one really has any monopoly on “history,” and that “history” really is a matter of perspective. This explains our fixation with source-based questions.

I came to enjoy this soft-spoken, kindly young professor very much. He was respectful towards each of his students, even the reticent and shy ones like myself. His comments on my essays were superbly encouraging and nurturing. His personable style was the perfect counterfoil to the steely, self-made, soldier-turned diplomat-turned historian.

Professor Dyck was very keen to get us all working on primary sources. He had a nice collection of common English ditties, rhymes and songs sang all over 19^th century England. I had wondered why not the letters, diaries, journals and documents of high-powered men such as the Churchills, Wellingtons, Kitcheners and so on. However, I learnt a valuable lesson from Dyck. The ordinary, unknown, nameless and common man (and woman) was as important as the politician, diplomat and general. It was a lesson well absorbed. It helped me view the past sympathetically, and with full cognizance that “the lower classes” must be represented as much as “the upper classes.” I am no left-leaning socialist by any means, but in the “Humanities,” surely the study of all classes of humans ought to be attempted.

I was not surprised that Professor Dyck’s star continued to shine even after I left university. It was therefore with some sadness that I learnt of his passing away in 2007. I append the full testimonial to him printed in the university website:

Ian Dyck (1954 -2007)

Following a courageous battle with a chronic form of lymphocytic leukemia, first diagnosed in 1999 and the challenge of a bone marrow transplant this past November, Ian Dyck, an Associate Professor in the department of History, passed away on Sunday 15 July 2007, eight days shy of his 53rd birthday. Proud son of Saskatchewan farmers, Ian completed BA and MA degrees from the University of Saskatchewan before taking up doctoral work at the University of Sussex under the influential supervision of John Harrison. D. Phil. in hand, Ian taught for a year at Saskatchewan and another at Lethbridge before coming to Simon Fraser in 1988. SFU suited Ian and he flourished at the university. His work on William Cobbett and Rural Popular Culture, published by Cambridge University Press in 1992, established a reputation that he enhanced with two edited collections, a dozen articles and a score of reviews. His most recent work was a fine edition of Cobbett's Rural Rides for Penguin (2001). Until the illness robbed him of his strength, he gathered material for a seminal study of what he called The Cottage Charter: Rural Song in England, 1500 - present. His work won him support from SSHRC and fellowships in Cambridge and at the Huntington Library. He will perhaps be best remembered as a superb teacher with an uncanny ability to relate to young people, winning the University's Excellence in Teaching Award in 1991. Hundreds of undergraduates delighted in his Western Civilization lectures and he was much loved as a seminar leader in a course on Popular Culture in Britain and Europe or in the required courses for History Honours students. Few colleagues made such an impression on graduate students. Instinctively collegial and sympathetic, hospitality was his second nature and he made good gossip over a pint an art form. His loss will be deeply felt by many and we send our condolences to his family who were with him in his final hours. A celebration of Ian's life was held at the Halpern Centre on 18 October 2007.

Perhaps unconsciously, maybe to an extent, deliberately, I have manifested a little of each of these “favourite teachers” in my own present teaching style. On occasions, I have caught myself sweeping my arms dramatically in the air to captured the essence of tension before I press home some pertinent point – Ingram. On other occasions, I revel in relating how several Serbian assassins attempted repeatedly to kill the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, with eerily amusing results, before one finally succeeded – Stigger. And quite often, my students challenge me on some point of perspective (“doesn’t it actually mean that ….?”) – Dyck.

I hope that in some small way, I would have been a similar inspiration to some budding historian.

(2012)