Carter ELWOOD

CARTER ELWOOD On September 22, 2018 Carter Elwood, a Distinguished Research Professor at Carleton University, died of complications following an accident, in Ottawa in his 83rd year. He was the son of the late Calvin and Virginia (Carter) Elwood and brother of the late Holly Whiting of Chatham, Massachusetts. With his first wife, the late Dr. Sandra Wieland, he had three children: Bruce (Diana) of Vancouver, Marjorie (Bea) of Denver, and Ken (Mara) of Auckland. In them he had a fierce but quiet pride. Ken's sons Benjamin and Mattheus were a particular source of joy in recent years. With Dr. Jill St. Germain, his wife of the last 28 years, Carter took some unconventional roads, learned to live a little outside of work, and found himself immersed in a large family. He was also the much-loved companion of four Siberian huskies. Professor Elwood was born in Chicago in 1936, raised in Rochester, and educated at the Loomis School in Windsor, Conn., Dartmouth College, the University of Edinburgh, and Columbia University, where he received his PhD in Russian history in 1969. He taught briefly at the University of Virginia and the University of Alberta before coming to Carleton in 1968 where he taught Russian history until 2017. He held visiting research appointments at St. Antony's College (Oxford), Fribourg University (Switzerland), the London School of Economics, and Harvard University. During the course of this research he published or edited nine books including The Non-Geometric Lenin (London, 2011). His biography of Inessa Armand (Cambridge, 1992 and 2002) won the Heldt Prize for the best work on an aspect of Russian women's history. He served as the editor or associated editor of the Canadian Slavonic Papers (1975-1985) and as the general editor of fifteen volumes of papers emerging from the III Congress of Soviet and East European Studies held in 1985. He was especially proud to have been the recipient of four awards for outstanding undergraduate teaching, the most recent being the Capital Educators Award in 2013. In addition, he supervised the writing of 46 honours or graduate theses. Carter Elwood was one of those rare academics who actually enjoyed the administrative responsibilities that come with university teaching. He served as Chair of the History Department from 1982 to 1995 and in 1993 had the unenviable task of being the Coordinator of the Learned Societies Conference which brought over 8000 scholars to Carleton. As a result of spending a sabbatical year near Fribourg, he became an ardent Swissophile, returning almost every summer to hike in the Alps and to do occasional research. This interest in Switzerland recently led him to offer a course for retirees on that country's history and attractions. Closer to home, Carter loved spending week-ends skiing, snow-shoeing or hiking in the beautiful Gatineau Hills until slowed by arthritis. At various times in his life he collected postage stamps, bicycled in Europe, cheered for the Ottawa Roughriders, sampled fine (and not so fine) wines, listened to opera when his wife was not around, and tried to maintain (with varying degrees of success) a garden and a century-old house along the Rideau Canal. Funeral arrangements include a private family service and an additional gathering for friends and colleagues. In lieu of flowers, friends are encouraged to contribute to an educational institution of their choice. An historian who did not live in the past, an optimist who did not anticipate the future, Carter lived in the present and accepted and relished it for what it was. He was that most enviable of things, a contented man.