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James McIntosh Skinner
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Historian.
Born at Peterhead, Scotland on 30 March 1933, he received an undergraduate education at Aberdeen University and graduate training at the Universities of Kent (Canterbury) and Stockholm (Sweden). He met Hazel Barclay (1938-2026) on a tennis court and they married in 1961. Their daughter was born two years later and, in 1965, the family emigrated to Canada and settled at Brandon.
For twenty-eight years he taught British and Modern European history at Brandon University but eventually turned to film as history and history as film. A number of his works on movies and the Second World War are in the Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film (3 volumes, Routledge 2006). His other interest is in film censorship where he has published, among other items, “The Cross and the Cinema: A History of the Catholic Legion of Decency, 1934-68” (Praeger, 1993).
He was a New Democratic candidate for the Brandon West constituency in the 1969 provincial general election but was defeated by Edward Robert McGill. He was director of the Brandon Film Festival (1969-1989) and a film columnist for the Brandon Sun.
After retirement in 1993, he moved to Victoria, British Columbia where he lectured seasonally at the University of Victoria and was President of the Victoria Secular Humanist Association. He died at Victoria on 1 August 2013, predeceased by his second wife Sheila Kingham (1936-2009).
His articles for the Manitoba Historical Society:
Clean and Decent Movies: Selected Cases and Responses of the Manitoba Film Censor Board, 1930 to 1950
Manitoba History, Number 14, Autumn 1987Reminiscences of a Manitoba Film Censor: An Interview with Locksley D. McNeill
Manitoba History, Number 17, Spring 1989A Leap in the Dark: The Transition from Film Censorship to Classification in Manitoba, 1970-72
Manitoba History, Number 25, Spring 1993Hollywood Belatedly Recognises Manitoba: Northern Pursuit (1943) as a Relic of the Second World War Screen Propaganda
Manitoba History, Number 72, Spring-Summer 2013
Obituary [Sheila Kingham], Brandon Sun, 3 October 2009.
Obituary, Brandon Sun, 10 August 2013.
Obituary [Hazel Skinner], Brandon Sun, 29 August 2026.
We thank Rhonda McDougal for providing additional information used here.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 2 September 2026
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