From the Wikipedia article:
Samuel Delbert ["Del"] Clark (
24 February 1910 –
September 18,
2003) was a
Canadian sociologist. He was married to Rosemary Landry Clark for 63 years (died February, 2008). His living children are Samuel Clark (himself a sociologist at the
University of Western Ontario) and
Edmund Clark (CEO of the
Toronto Dominion Bank).
Born in
Lloydminster, Alberta, Clark received a
Bachelor of Arts degree in
political science and history in 1930 and a
Master of Arts degree in 1931 from the
University of Saskatchewan. From 1932 to 1933, he studied at the
London School of Economics. In 1935, he received a Master of Arts degree from
McGill University and a Ph.D. in 1938 from the
University of Toronto. In 1943, he was awarded a Fellowship from the
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
In 1938, he started teaching at the University of Toronto in the Department of
Political Economy. Through his efforts, sociology gained respect from Canadian scholars who were initially skeptical of the discipline.
[1] On July 1, 1963, he led the founding of the Sociology department and served as its first chair until 1969. He retired in 1976, but taught for years as a Visiting Professor at a number of places, including
Dalhousie University,
Lakehead University, and the
University of Edinburgh.
As a sociologist, Clark became known for studies interpreting Canadian social development as a process of disorganization and re-organization on a series of economic frontiers. His scholarship won him acceptance at a time when Canadian academics were still skeptical of the new discipline of sociology. Under Clark’s direction, a series on the
Social Credit movement produced 10 monographs by Canadian scholars. In the 1960s, Clark’s interest shifted to contemporary consequences of economic changes, especially suburban living and urban poverty.
Clark’s publications – mainly books -- include The Canadian Manufacturers Association (1939), The Social Development of Canada (1942), Church and Sect in Canada (1948), Movements of Political Protest in Canada (1959), The Developing Canadian Community (1962), The Suburban Society (1966), Canadian Society in Historical Perspective (1976) and The New Urban Poor (1978).
Clark was elected president of the
Canadian Political Science Association in 1958 and honorary president of the
Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association in 1967. In 1978, he was made an Officer of the
Order of Canada as "social historian of international repute and, as one of our most distinguished scholars".
[1] A Fellow of the
Royal Society of Canada, he also served as its president from 1975 to 1976. He was elected a foreign honorary member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1976. He was awarded the
J.B. Tyrrell Historical Medal in 1960. He received
honorary degrees from the
University of Calgary,
Dalhousie University,
Lakehead University, the
University of Western Ontario, the
University of Manitoba, and the
University of Toronto.
[2]In 1999, the Department of Sociology,
University of Toronto instituted the endowed "S.D. Clark Chair" in his honour. The first holder of the chair was William Michelson, a scholar of
housing and
urban sociology. In 2006, he was succeeded by
Barry Wellman, a scholar of the
Internet,
community and
social networks.