H. H. Wrong

Who was H. H. Wrong?

Humphrey Hume Wrong was a Canadian historian, professor, diplomat, and Canada's ambassador to the United States. He was born in Toronto and died in Ottawa.

Wrong was part of Canada's true aristocracy. Grandson of labor party leader Edward Blake and son of historian George MacKinnon Wrong, Hume Wrong graduated from high school at Ridley College and was a graduate of the University of Toronto where he joined The Kappa Alpha Society, and served in the British Expeditionary Force shortly after. He later went to the University of Oxford for graduate study, and became a history professor at the University of Toronto in 1921. Hume was one of five siblings: missionary Margaret Christian Wrong; historian, Oxford academic, and Magdalene College Don, Edward Murray Wrong; British Army officer Harold Verschoyle Wrong; and Agnes Honoria Wrong.

Wrong joined the newly expanded Canadian Department of External Affairs in the late 1920s, around the same time as fellow future star diplomats Lester Pearson, Norman Robertson, and Hugh Keenleyside; this expansion was engineered by Oscar D. Skelton.