Historian.
Born at London, England in 1937, son of Arthur Kendle (c1909-1979) and Sybil Kendle (1906-1994), in 1948 he immigrated to Winnipeg with his family. He attended Lord Roberts Junior High School and Gordon Bell High School, where he was an active football player and, at the age of fourteen, began a lifelong interest in curling at the Fort Rouge Curling Club and later the Strathcona Curling Club.
After receiving a BA degree from United College (1958), he worked as a social worker (1958-1959) before entering the MA program in history at the University of Manitoba in 1959. He began a thesis on an early-twentieth century British imperial propaganda group known as the Round Table Movement. Before finishing an MA degree, he received an IODE Overseas Scholarship and began graduate studies at King’s College, University of London in 1961 and subsequently graduated with a PhD degree in Imperial and Commonwealth history with a thesis that became his first book.
In 1965, he joined the Department of History at the University of Manitoba where he taught until 2001. During that time he served as Graduate Studies Chair (1979-1981) and Department Chair (1982-1985, 1990-2001). He also served as book review editor for Manitoba History (1979-1981) and Chair of the Historic Sites Advisory Board of Manitoba (1982-1984). At the national level, he was President of the Canadian Historical Association (1981-1982). He was the Commonwealth Fellow at St. John’s College, Cambridge (1985-1986).
He has written several books, including The Colonial and Imperial Conferences 1887-1911 (1967), British Empire and Commonwealth, 1897-1931 (1972), The Round Table Movement and Imperial Union (1975), John Bracken: A Political Biography (1979), Ireland and the Federal Solution: The Debate Over the United Kingdom Constitution 1870-1921 (1989), Walter Long, Ireland, and the Union, 1905-1920 (1992), and Federal Britain: A History (1997).
Obituary [Arthur Kendle], Winnipeg Free Press, 12 July 1979, page 67.
Obituary [Sybil Kendle], Winnipeg Free Press, 15 October 1994, page 44.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 19 November 2023
