Hugh Johnston
Hugh Johnston is a professor emeritus in history at SFU, where he has taught for 36 years. For 11 of those years, he was the department chair. Since retirement, he has enjoyed teaching in the Seniors Program at SFU.
He attended the University of Toronto, the Ontario College of Education, the University of Western Ontario, and King’s College at the University of London. Between degrees, he taught high school for three years.
From 1992 to 2001, he served on the board of the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, a bi-national organization promoting scholarly exchange; in 1995–96 he was resident director of the institute’s office in Delhi; and in 2001, he was the institute’s president. He has written about British and South Asian migration and settlement, 18th-century exploration of the Pacific Northwest, the history of British Columbia, and higher education in Canada.
Johnston’s books include British Emigration Policy 1815–1830: Shovelling out Paupers (1972); The Voyage of the Komagata Maru: The Sikh Challenge to Canada’s Colour Bar (1979); The Four Quarters of the Night: the Life Story of an Emigrant Sikh (1995); and Radical Campus: Making Simon Fraser University (2005). He is working on a biography of Kapoor Singh, a Sikh pioneer, mill owner, and philanthropist.
Previously taught:
- Famous Canadian Stories in Their Historical Context (55+)
- History of the Sikhs of Punjab: From the First Guru to the Present (55+)
- Whatever Happened to the British Empire? (55+)
- The History of British India (55+)
- Remarkable Prime Ministers: King, Macdonald, Trudeau, Laurier (55+)
- I'm Here! The Immigrant in Canadian History (55+)
- An Introduction to Canadian History (55+)
