Winthrop Pickard Bell

Who was Winthrop Pickard Bell?

Winthrop Pickard Bell was a Canadian academic who taught philosophy at the University of Toronto and Harvard. He is however perhaps best known for his work as a historian of Nova Scotia.

He was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia and educated at Mount Allison University, McGill University, Harvard University, the University of Leipzig, and finally at the University of Göttingen. Edith Stein was among his friends during his Göttingen period.

During the First World War he was held in the civilian internment camp at Ruhleben, near Berlin, for more than three years. After the war he taught philosophy at the University of Toronto and at Harvard University, which he left in 1927 to pursue a career in business.

In his latter years he focused his energies on historical research, much of which concerned the group of mid-18th-Century immigrants to Nova Scotia known as the "Foreign Protestants". His most notable publication was The "Foreign Protestants" and the Settlement of Nova Scotia, which was published by the University of Toronto Press in 1961; his Register of the Foreign Protestants of Nova Scotia was published some years after his death.