John Murray Gibbon

Who was John Murray Gibbon?

John Murray Gibbon was a Scottish Canadian writer and cultural promoter. He was born in Ceylon and educated at Aberdeen, Oxford and Göttingen universities. Gibbon emigrated to Canada in 1913 to work for the Canadian Pacific Railway. In 1921, he became founding president of the Canadian Authors Association.

A long-time enthusiast of folk culture, Gibbon organized a series of folk and crafts festivals over the years. With Sir Ernest MacMillan, he published the four-volume French Canadian Folk Songs. Histories he wrote included Scots in Canada, Steel of Empire: The Romantic History of the Canadian Pacific, Canadian Mosaic and two histories of nursing. He also wrote several novels.

Gibbon's work was to have a major impact on the creation of a bilingual, multicultural, national culture. Canadian Mosaic influenced the adoption of the concept of a "cultural mosaic" in the Canadian government's multiculturalism policies. He died at Montreal.