Topics of widespread concern to Canadians interested in the social sciences and to the general reading public are dealt with in this volume of essays by a group of Canada''s leading scholars in political science and history. The book is presented in honour of Henry Forbes Angus, Head of the Department of Economics, Political Science, and Sociology at the University of British Columbia from 1930 to 1956, and the authors are all his former students, colleagues or associates. Included also are a bibliography of publications Dean Angus and, with his consent, a thoughtful and humorous article of his entitled "Administration and Democracy." 

Henry Forbes Angus was born in Victoria, in 1891. He received his school education in Victoria and subsequently attended the Lycée Descartes at Tours (France) and McGill University from which he received his B.A. in 1911. He proceeded to Balliol College, Oxford where he obtained a B.A., first class, in 1913 and a B.C.L., also first class, in 1914. He won the highly prized Vinerian Law Scholarship at Oxford in 1914, and was called to the Inner Temple Bar in the same year.

Henry Angus served throughout the First World War: in India from 1914 to 1916 and in Mesopotamia from 1916 to 1919. He was promoted to the rank of Captain and mentioned in despatches. He returned to British Columbia after the war, and in 1919 was appointed Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of British Columbia. In the same year he obtained his M.A. from Oxford. He was promoted Head of the Department of Economics, Political Science and Sociology in 1930. From 1949 to 1956 he was also Dean of Graduate Studies.

Professor Angus was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1939 and was its President in 1951-1952. He has honorary degrees from McGill University and from the University of British Columbia. He was a member of the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations, 1937-40, and a member of the Royal Commission on Transportation, 1949-51. From 1941 to 1945 he was Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for External Affairs.

Since 1955, Dean Angus has been Chairman of the Public Utilities Commission of British Columbia.