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Born in Ottawa in 1920, of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick parentage, Eugene Fairweather grew up in Montreal, nurtured in Anglo-Catholic piety and classical education. His earliest published works were frequent columns for the Canadian Churchman (beginning in 1938), and many editorials and book reviews in the Anglican Outlook, a Christian Socialist journal published in Montreal. After graduate studies in classics at the University of Toronto, and divinity at Trinity College, where he became a tutor in 1944, and then lecturer in dogmatic theology, he left Toronto in 1947 to obtain S.T.M. and Th.D. degrees at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. In 1949, he returned to Toronto as associate professor of theology and ethics at Trinity, where he was named Keble Professor of Divinity in 1964.
Fairweather was well known in academic circles throughout North America. He often served as a visiting lecturer (for example, he gave the Bishop Paddock Lecture at General Seminary in 1956 and the Hale Memorial Lectures at Seabury-Western in 1963). He served as President of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies, and the Canadian Theological Society; as a founder, and editor (1960-1970), of the Canadian Journal of Theology, to which he was a frequent contributor; and as a founder of its successor, the Toronto Journal of Theology. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and received honorary degrees from several universities, including his alma mater, McGill, and the University of King's College, Halifax. Internationally, he contributed to several conferences on St. Augustine and St. Anselm. Especially notable...