Rev. Donald Macleod's biography of Presbyterian minister W. Stanford Reid recently received the Donald Grant Creighton Award. The citation for the award states that the book about “Reid's spiritual and intellectual journey gives a balanced in-depth critique of the man and his times, never fawning or censorious.”
W. Stanford Reid: An Evangelical Calvinist in the Academy chronicles the life of Reid and his wife, Priscilla. Reid was a parish minister and church planter in the Presbyterian Church, as well as an academic who left a tenured position as a professor at McGill University in 1965 to found the History Department at the University of Guelph. Much of the Scottish collection in the archives of the university's McLaughlin Library — generally regarded as the finest outside Scotland — was gathered by Reid. He also established the Scottish Studies program at Guelph. Mrs. Reid, the daughter and granddaughter of Presbyterian ministers, was active in the Women's Missionary Society.
At the awards presentation, MacLeod said Reid has been underrated by the academy and his own denomination. Like Reid, MacLeod is a Presbyterian minister, serving most recently at St. Andrew's, Trenton, Ont. MacLeod was a student of Reid's, and has taught at Tyndale Theological Seminary in Toronto and was recently appointed research professor there.
The award, conferred at the Ontario Historical Society's annual meeting in Orillia, Ont., on May 6th, is named after Donald Grant Creighton, the biographer of Sir John A. Macdonald. – Priscilla & Stanford Reid Trust
