Growing up on the Alberta prairies, Gordon Brown was involved with school- and, later, university-student publications, often as a writer of doggerel but more usually as one confined by the duties of editor. He graduated in history from the University of Alberta in 1942 and spent the next four years in the army, mostly with an Alberta regiment, serving in Canada and overseas. In 1946, on demobilization at the age of 24, he accepted a position at the University of Alberta with responsibility as, among other things, editor of the university quarterly. The latter was a daunting assignment becaus