Dinner conversation with Angus McLaren could include the history of sexuality, film and jokes | Canada Voices

Angus McLaren: Historian. Traveller. Empath. Humorist. Born Dec. 20, 1942, in Vancouver; died June 7, 2024, in Vancouver, of Parkinson’s disease; aged 81.

Angus McLaren’s father was a jokester but his mother was institutionalized for depression. Angus inherited his father’s humour, and he learned early to have deep empathy for those like his mother whose lives were impacted by legal and medical institutions.

In high school, Angus was more studious than athletic, and liked to combine lightheartedness with support for the underdog. He and six of his other fellow nerds formed a playfully secret group called “the Inner Seven.” They challenged the basketball team to a game, like a modern David and Goliath match. Before the game they tied clear fishing wire over their net so their opponents couldn’t score; but once this trick was discovered, they of course lost.

Arlene Tigar, who attended the same high school, witnessed the Inner Seven shenanigans. In the summer of 1963, when she and Angus were undergrads at the University of British Columbia, they started dating. Their first date was at the Theatre Under the Stars in Stanley Park (romantic despite the mosquitos). Arlene was drawn to Angus’s spontaneous laughter, analytical mind and empathic heart. Reading a novel a day and working in the local mill, he found time to hang out with her at local beaches.

They married on July 1, 1965, using the holiday for a day off work. Angus was the first of his family to go to university and earned a degree in history; when he won a scholarship to pursue his PhD at Harvard, his father asked what he’d done wrong to require more schooling. After university and various jobs, Angus and Arlene moved back to B.C. to teach: Angus taught 19th century social history at University of Victoria, and Arlene taught sociology at Simon Fraser University. After 13 years of marriage, they had a son, Jesse.

Angus’s studies of the past were shaped by his present. A research trip to France in 1968 coincided with student protests and he was inspired by the Civil Rights and Women’s movements. He chose a subject that was taboo in his childhood and understudied in academia: the history of sexuality and reproduction. Angus and Arlene wrote The Bedroom and the State: the Changing Practices and Politics of Contraception and Abortion in Canada, the first book on the history of abortion and birth control in Canada.

Angus wrote 13 books, which were translated into multiple languages. He won the prestigious Molson Prize in 2008; the jury noted he was “an imaginative and prolific historian who has increased significantly our understanding of sexuality, gender and reproduction.”

For 25 years Angus commuted by ferry from his home in Vancouver to his university in Victoria, staying with friends in what he comically called a “marriage of inconvenience.”

He shared a life of travel, academia and parenting with Arlene. Conversations at the dinner table were a lively combination of the history of sexuality, the latest movies and jokes. He supported Jesse’s interests – biking together to the local music library to photocopy piano sheet music, practising soccer at the park. Every Friday night Angus rented the latest French movie from the video store, each film contained an obligatory sex scene. As an academic this served as brainstorming for his research, and as someone who was shy, this provided an indirect way to discuss sex with his son.

Angus was known for his anecdotes but was also ready with a sharp barb, spoken with a twinkle in his eye, that nobody saw coming. Patience wasn’t his strong point. He’d arrive early to meetings and if you turned up on time, you were late and subject to his irritation.

Declining mobility and dementia challenged Angus’s final years: like a hurricane hitting the national archives, he was full of knowledge but it was fragmentary. Still, he maintained his humour, began writing a biography of his mother and daydreamed about travel.

His legacy will continue with a scholarship created in his name at the University of Victoria.

Jesse McLaren is Angus’s son and Arlene McLaren is Angus’s spouse.

To submit a Lives Lived: lives@globeandmail.com

Lives Lived celebrates the everyday, extraordinary, unheralded lives of Canadians who have recently passed. To learn how to share the story of a family member or friend, go online to tgam.ca/livesguide