The Man in the Ivory Tower: F Cyril James of McGill

J.L. Granatstein is a history professor at York University and author of
War and Peacekeeping and For Better or For Worse.

Cyril James was a British-born, American-trained academic who became
principal of McGill University in 1939. In those days, Canadians and
their governments were probably more impressed with foreign academics
than they ought to have been. James soon became head of a major
committee studying Reconstruction for the federal government. This task
involved him in complex issues beyond his ken and soon led to his being
detested by the Prime Minister and effectively gutted by the
bureaucracy. Very little of this emerges in this lightly researched
biography. The book is useful nonetheless for what it says about
James’s troubled personal life and his long-time and consistently
clever manipulation of students, faculty, and his board. This is a
useful manual for university presidents.