Robert W. Passfield is a history graduate of the University of Western Ontario (Honours History, 1968), and of McMaster University (M.A., 1969) where he pursued Ph.D. studies in Canadian History and three minor fields: political philosophy, modern European history, and diplomatic history. In graduate school, he undertook to prepare a dissertation on 'The Upper Canadian Tory Mind', which was to focus on the Anglican Tories of the Province of Upper Canada (Ontario) in the post-War of 1812 period. He did not complete the study at that time. Passfield is an advocate of a cultural values approach to the writing of history, which involves much more than a recording of 'what happened'. To truly understand an historical event, the historian must enter the minds of the protagonists - whether religious or secular - to comprehend their respective principles, values and beliefs, and their particular condition and circumstance. In effect, 'ideas influence actions'. It was the cultural values of each party that guided and governed its response to historical events, and the expressed thought which reveals the deeper meaning of the event.
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