Wednesday, April 12, 2023

Richard Van Loon on David Thompson

David Thompson (1770 – 1857) was a British-Canadian fur trader, surveyor and cartographer described as the greatest land geographer ever produced. Over his career, he travelled 90,000 kilometres, mapping 4.9 million square kilometres of North America along the way. Thompson has been described as the “greatest practical land geographer that the world has produced”. 

Richard Van Loon is past president of Carleton University and past chair of the Council of Ontario Universities. He holds a BSc in chemistry and an MA in political science from Carleton and a PhD in political studies from Queen’s University. He joined Carleton in 1970 as assistant professor of political science and has held faculty positions in the School of Public Policy and Administration at Carleton where he is now professor emeritus and in the Faculty of Administration at the University of Ottawa. He was associate deputy minister of Health Canada and of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and held several assistant deputy minister positions in the Canadian federal government. He was the first Carleton alumnus to become president of the university.

Dr. Van Loon’s current research interests include federal-provincial relations, particularly related to post-secondary education, quality assurance and instructional methodology in post-secondary education a