Robin Mathews

Although a poet, playwright and academic, Robin Daniel Middleton Mathews is best known as a militant advocate of Canadian nationalism and resistance to American imperialism. Mathews was born in Smithers, British Columbia, Canada, in 1931, the youngest of six children born to Harold Middleton Mathews and Margaret Mary Tully. He completed an Honours BA in English at the University of British Columbia with an undergraduate thesis on Matthew Arnold and an MA at Ohio State with a thesis on Henry James. After working for a year as a radio producer for the CBC, Mathews began a PhD at the University of Toronto where he was an unconvinced student of the mythopoeic theorist and critic Northrop Frye.

Mathews abandoned his doctoral studies