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Searching for Equality: The Sociology of John Porter

John Porter's influence on Canadian sociology and on the social sciences in general was tremendous . His name, particularly in association with The Vertical Mosaic (TVM), is one of the few in the social sciences known internationally. His death was a great loss, especially for those who knew him personally. I have found writing this paper a difficult task in several ways . On the one hand I want to accurately portray the essential elements of his intellectual contribution, but his writings were many and do not readily lend themselves to condensation . On the other hand my intellectual (as opposed to personal) relationship with Porter was often one of contention . We frequently disagreed in our modes of analysis or interpretation . My problem will be to portray his positions on the topics he considered essential yet keep my editorializing to a minimum . I will not pretend to be detached from the subjects discussed here or even from my personal relationship to Porter but I will attempt to outline objectively his enormous contribution . John Porter was born in Vancouver, British Columbia on the 12th of November 1921 and left Canada in 1937, remaining abroad for what he called "twelve formative years." As a teenager he worked at odd jobs and eventually as a reporter for the Daily Sketch, a Kemsley (now Thompson) Newspaper, in London . He joined the Canadian Army in 1941 as a private, rising by his release in 1946 to captain, having spent the war in the Canadian Intelligence Corps in Italy, North Africa, and North-West Europe . His class origins had prevented him from receiving much formal education ; his father "did some clerical work but had no inclination to do anything very much," and John never graduated from high school . The war, however, gave him the chance to enter university through a veterans' program. He entered the London School of Economics and Political Science, graduating with a B.Sc . in 1949 . Returning to Canada on a Department of Veterans Affairs trip, he stopped in Ottawa to look up an army friend . Paul Fox invited him to become a teacher of Political Science at Carleton, where he remained, aside from a brief sojourn at the University of Toronto in 1968-69, until his death on the 15th of June, 1979 .