I never intended this blog to become an obituary column, and I certainly didn't expect to write this obit. Tim Cook, the extraordinarily successful and extraordinarily productive historian of Canada's wars and Canada's soldiers, has died at the age of just fifty-four.
In a publishing career of barely twenty-five years, he came close to a book-a-year pace, many of them very substantial titles, while holding down a big job as Chief Historian at the Canadian War Museum.
I saw a piece today that explained he had suffered from, and apparently survived, Hodgkin's over a decade ago. In that interview he also explained how he evolved from academic scholarship to trade-market historical writing.
I’m an academic-trained historian . . . but part of this is having the pleasure of working at the Canadian War Museum. Our job is to present history for all Canadians.
It's good to be reminded from time to time of the central importance of the historians in museums, in historic sites work, in all those fields.
I was emailing briefly with Tim Cook last month. I didn't know him well, but I'd talked to him for my article in the current Canada's History, for which he put me in touch with a vital interviewee -- also at the War Museum -- and he responded to my note of thanks/link to the story.
I hadn't expect it to be a final contact.
Photo credit: Adrian Wyld Canadian Press, via CBC News
