Tim Cook, the chief historian at the Canadian War Museum and the country’s “pre-eminent military historian,” has died, the museum announced Sunday.
Cook was “a passionate ambassador” for both the museum and Canadian military history, and his contributions to the Ottawa museum over the past two-plus decades have been “enormous,” said senior director of public affairs Yasmine Mingay in a statement.
Cook published more than 19 books and won numerous awards, the museum said, including the Ottawa Book Award for literary non-fiction on four separate occasions.
In his 2022 book Life Savers and Body Snatchers: Medical Care and the Struggle for Survival in the Great War, Cook unearthed evidence that Canadian doctors were part of a British program that harvested organs from slain First World War soldiers without getting consent.
“I had seen snippets of this in the letters and diaries of doctors, but I could scarcely believe it,” Cook told CBC at the time. “It’s nowhere in any of our history books. It’s not part of our story of how we treated the fallen.”
His other notable works included No Place to Run: The Canadian Corps and Gas Warfare in the First World War and The Necessary War, Volume 1: Canadians Fighting The Second World War: 1939-1943.
Both won the C.P. Stacey Award, handed out annually to the best book in the field of Canadian military history.
Late last year, Cook published The Good Allies, a deep dive into the relationship between the U.S. and Canada during the Second World War.
“As I was writing the book, I kept thinking, there are lessons [for] today. We are continually still struggling to figure out, ‘How do we work with the United States? How do we pull our weight, and yet at the same time take control of our own sovereignty?'” Cook told CBC Radio’s All in a Day in November 2024.
“The debate over two per cent spending for defence and other issues … are always with us. And yet, we’ve been good allies.”
Cook’s many accolades also included receiving the Governor General’s History Award and being named to the Order of Canada.
The museum did not share Cook’s cause of death.
