Mark McGowan is a specialist in the religious, social, migration, and educational history of Canada. He is co-editor of the award-winning books Catholics at the Gathering Place: Historical Essays on the Archdiocese of Toronto (1992) and The Waning of the Green: Catholics, the Irish and Identity in Toronto, 1887-1922 (McGill-Queen’s 1999); Michael Power: The Struggle to Build the Catholic Church on the Canadian Frontier (McGill-Queen’s, 2005). He has recently completed a revisionist work on the Irish Famine migration to Canada (for the CHA Canadian Ethnic Groups Series) and a short book for the Ireland Park Foundation: “A Calamity to the Province”: The Irish Famine Migration of 1847 and Toronto. He is currently researching the creation of historical memory within the Irish Diaspora and a new book on the history of the Catholic Church in Canada from 1900 to 1960. A recipient of two University Teaching Awards, he is currently Principal of St. Michael’s College.
Department of History
Principal, St. Michael’s College
BA (Ottawa ), MA, PhD (Toronto )
Odette Hall 127
tel: (416) 926-7102
email: mark.mcgowan@utoronto.ca
Areas of research
Religious history of Canada and the United States, religion and the media, collective memory, and ethnicity.
Selected publications
“Death or Canada: The Irish Famine Migration to Toronto, 1847″ (Novalis, 2009)
“Catholics: Anglophone and Allophone,” in Paul Bramadat and David Seljak, eds., Christianity and Ethnicity in Canada, (2008): 49-100.
“Michael Power: The Struggle to Build the Catholic Church on the Canadian Frontier” (2005);
“Partner’s in Faith: Readings in the History of Catholic Education in Ontario” (2002);
“The Waning of the Green: Catholics, the Irish, and Identity in Toronto? (1999);