I called her out of the blue at McMaster University in 1991, when I was making an Ideas radio documentary "Historians on Confederation." I was just beginning to think of constitutional history as something worth working on. She had been deeply engaged with 19th century political thought for a long time by then, but she was still on that contract/sessional/temporary pilgrimage that so many of the most original scholars seem to endure.
She seemed at once like the someone who actually knew about the things I wanted to know about, and we kept loosely in touch. (Happily, the next time we talked she was a real professor at McMaster. I promoted her Canada's Founding Debates in 1998; she gave my 1867: How the Fathers Made a Deal its most penetrating review. Her book Discovering Confederation: A Canadian's Story is something quite unique: a memoir about confederation.
She moved in circles much to the right of mine, but I never found her scholarship "Conservative" -- the values she upheld were closer to the 19th century liberalism that she saw underpinning the confederation settlement.
I think I last saw her in 2024 at a conference in Quebec City on the 1864 Quebec Conference. She had given up posting to her blog by then (though it's still available online).
Image: from the online obituary
