Trial Balloons and Other Adventures with Clio: John Sargent Moir, Catholic-Protestant Relations, and the Writing of Canadian Religious History

Abstract

John Moir was clearly dejected. It was the early spring, 1986, and his teaching career at the University of Toronto was winding towards a possible early retirement. He had planned a big book, perhaps one that would bring together many of the strands of research and writing that had marked nearly forty years of his dance with Clio, the muse of History. The new project was to be a history of Protestant-Roman Catholic relations in Canada. He had sought experts from both English and French Canada to support his application for a major research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. He had confided in me that although this would put his stamp on the question, it was yet another of what he called the trial balloons that marked his career in writing Canadian church history. Moir referred to himself, in jest, as a garden variety historian who was merely sending up a series of trial balloons on everything from Canadian Presbyterianism, church-state relations, education, and Biblical criticism, that were launched to allow colleagues and students to take aim at them with their own scholarship and try either to let them fly or pop them down. When the news arrived in this particular spring, SSHRC’s negative decision shot the magnum opus balloon out of Moir’s hands before he had a chance to launch it. While Moir may have taken SSHRC’s