John Murray Gibbon was a Scottish Canadian writer and cultural promoter. He was born in Ceylon and educated at Aberdeen

University of Aberdeen

The University of Aberdeen, an ancient university founded in 1495, in Aberdeen, Scotland, is a British university. It is the third oldest university in Scotland, and the fifth oldest in the United Kingdom and wider English-speaking world...

, Oxford

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

 and Göttingen universities. Gibbon emigrated to Canada in 1913 to work for the Canadian Pacific Railway

Canadian Pacific Railway

The Canadian Pacific Railway , formerly also known as CP Rail between 1968 and 1996, is a historic Canadian Class I railway founded in 1881 and now operated by Canadian Pacific Railway Limited, which began operations as legal owner in a corporate restructuring in 2001...

. In 1921, he became founding president of the Canadian Authors Association.

A long-time enthusiast of folk culture, Gibbon organized a series of folk

Folk music

Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

 and crafts

Arts and crafts

Arts and crafts comprise a whole host of activities and hobbies that are related to making things with one's hands and skill. These can be sub-divided into handicrafts or "traditional crafts" and "the rest"...

 festivals over the years. With Sir Ernest MacMillan

Ernest MacMillan

Sir Ernest Alexander Campbell MacMillan, CC was an internationally renowned Canadian orchestral conductor and composer, and Canada's only "Musical Knight". He is widely regarded as being Canada's pre-eminent musician, from the 1920s through the 1950s...

, he published the four-volume French Canadian Folk Songs (1928). Histories he wrote included Scots in Canada (1911), Steel of Empire: The Romantic History of the Canadian Pacific (1935), Canadian Mosaic

Canadian Mosaic

Canadian Mosaic was a book by John Murray Gibbon, published in 1938. Gibbon's book, the full title of which was Canadian Mosaic: The Making of a Northern Nation, heralded a new way of thinking about immigrants that was to shape Canadian immigration policy in the latter part of the Twentieth century...

(1938) and two histories of nursing. He also wrote several novels.

Gibbon's work was to have a major impact on the creation of a bilingual

Bilingualism in Canada

The official languages of Canada are English and French, which "have equality of status and equal rights and privileges as to their use in all institutions of the Parliament and Government of Canada" according to Canada's constitution...

, multicultural, national culture. Canadian Mosaic influenced the adoption of the concept of a "cultural mosaic

Cultural mosaic

"Cultural mosaic" is a term used to describe the mix of ethnic groups, languages and cultures that co-exist within Canadian society. The idea of a cultural mosaic is intended to champion an ideal of multiculturalism, differently from other systems like the melting pot, which is often used to...

" in the Canadian government's multiculturalism policies. He died at Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

.