Skip to main content

Favourite professors from the 40s 1940

John Purkis

Many Commerce professors of the 1940s are still celebrated by the community and beyond for their exemplary leadership include L. G. Macpherson, F. A. Knox, J. A. Corry, R. G. H. Smails and W. A. Mackintosh.

John Purkis, BCom'48, explained that Prof. Lorne McDougall, an expert in the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway, “never gave a lecture without some reference to the railroad. Lorne was Honorary President of Comm‘48 until his death.” Equally memorable was the frenetic statistics professor, G. L. Edgett, affectionately nicknamed “Edgett the Fidget,” who “covered the blackboard with numbers from front to back and left our class bewildered.”

When Professor Smails authored a textbook – the first Canadian standard text in accounting, which was used well into the 1950s – the class played a significant role. “As he was writing it, he would bring each chapter to class and we would help to proofread it and do the tests that were part of each section,” John shared with the School's magazine in 2009.

View original article