John Porter (sociologist) - Early Life

Early Life

At 15 John Porter’s father lost his job in Vancouver and his family moved to England in search of stable work. Luck, however, was not found. The depression had devastated both the Canadian and British economies and, after a short while of wrestling with his own poverty induced depression, Porter’s father abandoned his family. John who had left high school in Vancouver was never able to return as he searched and worked for subsistence. Known for being a gifted student who had a particular proficiency in creative writing, he continued his studies informally with his mother—a schoolteacher.

War broke out and in 1941 Porter joined the Canadian Army as an Intelligence Officer and, towards the end of the war in 1943, he was part of the Allied invasion of Italy and Sicily. After the war he worked with a colonel in London writing a history of Canada’s involvement in the war while studying for the entrance exam to the London School of Economics—which he passed on his first attempt. He joined the school at a particularly important ferment: while the university had abandoned its social democratic and Fabian roots, its professors and students were heavily influenced by a liberal reformism which, in the words of one commentator, was “a widely shared belief that the irrationality of war and suffering could be eliminated by the judicious application of humane rationality specifically manifested in the form of a generous and intelligent welfare state.” Reflecting upon his time as the LSE Porter notes that he was most animated by “a concern for ethical principles in social life.”

In 1949 he graduated and, after a twelve year hiatus, returned to Canada. He was offered a job teaching political science at the adolescent Carleton College and, two years later, switched to Sociology – becoming the school’s first appointment in the field. Eventually he was told that to retain his job he would have to get a graduate degree or begin publishing in a meaningful way. As such, in the early 1950s, he began the project that, fifteen years later, would culminate in the production of The Vertical Mosaic. The idea for the project had found its genesis at the LSE where, he had told his PhD supervisor, he wanted to “write an interpretation of Canada as a modern democracy.”