Morrison, Hugh Whitney, 1908- : Hugh Whitney Morrison was born 15 May 1908 in Vegreville, the son of Frederic Augustus Morrison and Mabel Whitney. He was educated at Strathcona High School and attended the University of Alberta where in 1930 he received a Bachelor of Arts in English. He won a Rhodes Scholarship in that year and proceeded to Merton College, Oxford, to study English and Political Theory. Morrison spent three years at Oxford receiving an Honours Degree in English literature and language, and playing baseball and hockey for Oxford teams. After completing his education, he joined one of Lord Beaverbrook's papers, the "London Evening Standard", in 1933 as a reporter but was laid off six months later as part of an austerity measure. He returned to Canada in 1934 and joined the "Toronto Daily Star" as a reporter doubling as an assistant editor with the "Star Weekly".
Fellow Rhodes Scholar W. E. Gladstone Murray hired him in 1938 as the CBC's Director of Talks and Public Affairs broadcasts. In this position, he was responsible for high- profile programming including the acclaimed "We Have Been There" wartime series of reports from first-hand observers. In 1942 Morrison received special leave from the CBC to become special assistant to the President of "Transportes Aereos Centro-Americanos" (TACA) and British West Indian Airways (BWIA), Lowell Yerex. TACA was the largest freight carrying airline in Latin America and worked clandestinely with the British Government and Sir William Stephenson's British Security Coordination in New York, transporting strategic materials from the Caribbean region and Latin America. American business interests secured control of TACA after the war and ousted the Yerex regime, including Morrison.
Morrison joined a public relations agency in New York in 1946, John Nasht & Associates, which specialized in international accounts allowing him to use his contacts in Europe and Latin America to advantage. By 1948, he wished to return to Canada and received an offer which he accepted to become the Director of the Latin American shortwave service of CBC International. Based in Montreal, he managed fifteen staff and produced programming for broadcasts in four languages to Latin America. The reorganization and consolidation of charitable and social service activities in Toronto in 1952 created a new opportunity for Morrison when community leaders recruited him as Director of Public Relations, Community Chest (later the United Way) of Greater Toronto. He held this position, in which he was responsible for publicizing and promoting the United Way's fund-raising and charitable campaigns, until his retirement in 1972. He continued to work, however, as a Professor in the Public Relations program at Humber College in Toronto from 1973 to 1983.
Outside of his professional career, Morrison wrote and published two books: "Oxford Today and the Canadian Rhodes Scholarship" (Toronto: Gage, 1958) and "Shakespeare: His Daughters and His Tempest" (Toronto: Arcadian Press, 1963), among many shorter articles and publications. In recognition of his efforts on behalf of charitable causes, he received the Centennial Medal in 1967, the Queen's Jubilee Medal in 1977, the Medal of Service of the Canadian Red Cross, and Citations for Meritorious Service from the Canadian Council on Social Development and the United Way of America. The University of Alberta awarded him its Alumni Award in 2001. In addition, he served on the executive of the Canadian Association of Rhodes Scholars from 1969 to 1981 and also edited its newsletter, as well as serving on boards of many cultural foundations and organizations. Morrison first married Florentine St. Clair Sherman of New York City by whom he had one son, Hugh Peter St. Clair Morrison. After they divorced in 1954, he married Patricia LeMoine FitzGerald, daughter of the Group of Seven artist; she died in 1976. Morrison married Marita LaFlèche (b. 1920) in 1984; she died 16 November 1992 in Toronto.
