Ian MacPherson, the man who helped to revise the Co-operative Principles, has died aged 74.
Dr. MacPherson, a Canadian scholar and co-operative activist, was chair of the International Co-operative Alliance committee that revised the Principles in 1995 and also received the Rochdale Pioneers Award in 2005. He also took a leading role in creating the Canadian Co-operative Association and was the co-founder of CASC (the Canadian Association for the Study of Co-operation).
He has written dozens of books and articles about co-operatives, including A Century of Co-operation, the commemorative book marking the 100th anniversary of Canada’s organised co-operative movement in 2009.
In Canada, he served as president of both the Canadian Co-operative Association (CCA) and Credit Union Central of British Columbia (now part of Central 1 Credit Union), as well as on the boards of various consumer, financial and health care co-operatives.
Dame Pauline Green, President of the Alliance, paid tribute to Dr. MacPherson: "I heard of Ian's death with great sadness and a real sense of loss. It has been a privilege over recent years to meet and work with Ian who despite his years continued to be as enthusiastic, as committed and as challenging on both the opportunities for our global movement, and the need to raise our game across the globe.
"His great work over the last few years has been with the promotion and implementation of the Co-operative Peace Institute. He travelled to Cancun in Mexico to successfully argue the case for it at our General Assembly in 2011, and has been actively searching sponsors and advocates ever since. He and Yehudah Paz, that other great co-operator from Israel were both driven to establish the Peace Institute by the conviction that co-operation is a real force for peace as evidenced by the cohesion it brought in communities as people strove to build a future together, often in post conflict situations.
"Ian's reputation and work across so many decades will ensure that he will never be forgotten by our movement. He was a co-operative academic par excellence, and will be sorely missed across the globe, but nowhere more than in Canada. His sudden death has shocked us all.”
In 1976, he joined the faculty of the University of Victoria and later served as chair of the history department. From 1992 to 1999 he was the university’s Dean of Humanities and stepped down from that position to found and head the B.C. Institute for Co-operative Studies, since renamed the Centre for Co-operative and Community-Based Economy. He was also a founder of the Canadian Association for Studies in Co-operation (CASC), a multidisciplinary research organization which brings together co-operative academics and practitioners.
Sonja Novkovic, professor of economics at Saint Mary’s University and chair of the Alliance Committee on Co-operative Research, said: “There is no researcher in co-operative studies in Canada who has not benefited from Ian's large presence and path-breaking work. He was the founder of CASC and a mentor to many students and researchers whose lives have changed because they were influenced by Ian's passion and deep understanding of the co-operative movement. We will miss him as a friend, a humanitarian, and an inspiration.”
Added Denyse Guy, executive director of the CCA: “Ian touched the lives of many co-operators from across Canada and around the world. On a personal level, he served as an inspiration to many, many individual co-operators; he was a mentor to me for more than 15 years and provided wonderful and insightful guidance that I will always cherish.”
• The CCA has created a special blog commemorating the life of Dr. MacPherson, for more details, visit: www.IanMacPhersonMemorial.blogspot.ca.
