Robert A. Fenn

On May 1, a large number of Bob Fenn’s colleagues, students and friends gathered in the Music Room in Hart House to mourn his untimely passing and to celebrate his life. A string quartet played some of Bob’s favourite chamber music and several of his friends and colleagues shared recollections of his commitment to scholarship and to teaching, his passion for classical music, his love of family, and his undoubted eccentricities.

Bob’s long association with the University of Toronto began in the mid-1950’s with an undergraduate degree in political economy. During his undergraduate career, he won nearly a dozen scholarships and awards, so it was no surprise that he should pursue advanced work in his chosen field, political theory. At the London School of Economics, he produced a thesis on David Ricardo for a master’s degree and then embarked on what was to become a life-long study of the political thought of James Mill.

Returning to the University of Toronto in 1962, he focused his teaching on Marxism and liberalism, but also taught courses on Canadian politics, comparative government and early political thought. Bob loved teaching and never lost his enthusiasm for trying to stimulate serious study of serious subjects. To describe Bob’s scholarship as painstaking and thorough hardly begins to convey the attention he lavished on it. Bob loved nothing more than spending an afternoon among dusty tomes or blurry microfilm tracking down an obscure – or illegible – reference in Mill’s work. His book James Mill’s Political Thought expanded his doctoral work into what will surely stand as the definitive study on Mill. At the time of his death he was at work on several books related to Mill and his writings, including a nearly-completed multi-volume edition of Mill’s Common Place Books.

Scholarship and eclectic intellectual pursuits represented only one side of Bob Fenn. Many knew in him a loyal friend, a doting father, a generous and supportive colleague, and an active partisan. Bob was always ready to share an uncompromising critique of the latest TSO concert, a new computer technique or a laugh over the latest absurdity of the political world. His unique contribution to the Political Science Department will be missed.