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In Memoriam: J. Stefan Dupre
December 10, 2012
J. Stefan Dupré Memorial Fund. For more information, please click here.
IN MEMORIAM
DUPRÉ, J. Stefan
O. C., O.Ont., Ph.D., D.Sc.Soc., LL.D., D.U., Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Toronto.
November 3, 1936 ~ December 6, 2012
Died with his family at his side. He leaves his adored wife Anne Willson Dupré and their beloved children; daughter Sam (Daphne) Barrett and her husband Brock Barrett, and son Maurice Robert Dupré.
After receiving a B.A. from the University of Ottawa in 1955 and Ph.D. in Political Economy and Government from Harvard University in 1958, he served on the Harvard faculty until 1963 when he joined the Department of Political Economy at the University of Toronto, subsequently chairing this Department from 1970 until 1974. He continued to teach in that Department and its offshoot, Political Science, until 1996 when he became President of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, a position he held until 2000. He authored or co-authored numerous books and articles on subjects ranging from federal, provincial and local finance to science and technology policy.
Throughout his career, he served the governments of this country in multiple capacities. In Ottawa, he was a member of the National Research Council and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. At Queen’s Park, he was the founding chair of the Ontario Council on University Affairs and subsequently chaired the Ontario Task Force on Financial Institutions and the Royal Commission on Asbestos. He was also an official advisor to the Alberta and the British Columbia Ministries of Advanced Education.
A past President of the Institute of Public Administration of Canada, he was a recipient of the Institute’s Vanier Medal, an Officer of the Order of Canada and a member of the Order of Ontario. He held honorary degrees from Laval, McMaster, the University of Ottawa, and the University of Toronto. His greatest career satisfaction came from the stimulation he derived during more than three decades teaching thousands of University of Toronto undergraduates in first or second year lecture courses. His greatest reward was the fond recollections voiced by his alumni.
Funeral Mass to be celebrated at St. Basil’s Catholic Church, 50 St. Joseph Street, Toronto, ON on Wednesday, December 12, 2012 at 11 a.m. Reception to follow at Massey College.
Donations in his memory may be made to the University of Toronto naming, if you wish, the Department of Political Science, or Massey College.
Globe and Mail, December 8, 2012.
U of T prof remembered for teaching ‘best’ class
Toronto Star
December 07, 2012
Victoria Ptashnick Staff Reporter
A distinguished political science professor and innovative administrator who received the Order of Canada for his outstanding services to education died on Thursday.
Stefan Dupré, 76, died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at Sunnybrook Hospital.
Dupré was born in Quebec City in 1936 to Anita Arden and the Hon. Maurice Dupré, a lawyer and conservative MP. After growing up in Quebec City, he graduated from the University of Ottawa and continued on to Harvard in 1957 to study political economy. He received his Ph.D. there in 1958 when he was 21. He was a research Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., for a year beginning and in 1958 he returned to Harvard, this time as a professor in political science. He was made secretary of Harvard’s Graduate School of Public Administration.
He married Anne Louise Dupré in 1963, the same year he joined the U of T teaching political science, becoming a full-time professor in 1966. She said he always thought his biggest contribution was his teaching. “He was a superb teacher. To this day, whenever we go to large gatherings people will come up to him and say his course was the best they’ve taken,” she says.
She says he had a particular fondness for teaching first-year students.
“He felt students arrived to university with an open mind and hadn’t been exposed to a lot of political economy and it was a chance to interest them in that. He loved that,” she said.
Dupré was the founding director of the university’s centre for Urban and Community Studies, the Associate Dean of the School of Graduate Studies and was appointed chairman of the department of political economy.
While at the U of T he also served as editorial director of the Ontario Committee on Taxation, was a member of the Ontario Civil Service Arbitration Board, and served on the Science Council/Canada Council Study Group on the Federal Support of University Research.
He was a member of the National Research Council of Canada until 1974 and served as president of the Institute of Public Administration of Canada in the ’70s as well.
Dupré served on the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council until 1984 and headed a royal commission on asbestos until 1984 as well. He was the president of the Institute for Public Administration and in 1985, received the Vanier medal for that, awarded by the governor general.
He was an adviser to the ministries of education in British Columbia, Alberta, and Nova Scotia in the late ’80s and the author of several books and academic articles. In 1991 he took the position of Master at Massey College for a year and in 1996 he retired to take up the presidency and CEO of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, which was founded by Fraser Mustard.
Donations in memory of Professor Dupré will support future students in the Department of Political Science. They may be directed to the ‘University of Toronto’ and sent to: The J. Stefan Dupré Memorial Fund, c/o Office of the Chair, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, ON Canada M5S 3G3. Tax receipts will be issued. The attached form may also be used: MS Word | PDF.