George Grube

Who was George Grube?

George Maximilian Antony Grube was a classicist and translator of Plato, Aristotle, Demetrius of Phaleron, Longinus and Marcus Aurelius, as well as a Canadian democratic socialist political activist.

He was born in Antwerp, Belgium, on 3 August 1899, and was educated in the United Kingdom. He served as a translator for the Belgium Army, attached to the British Expeditionary Force during the First World War. He attended Cambridge University's Emmanuel College, where he received his Master's degree in 1925.

He moved to Canada in 1928, to begin his career as a professor of classics at the University of Trinity College in the University of Toronto. He became the head of the classics department in 1931. Grube was a socialist, and serving in WWI turned him into a passionate pacifist. During his tenure at the UofT, he was involved in the Toronto branch of the League for Social Reconstruction, serving as president from 1934-1935. When the LSR took control of the nearly bankrupt magazine, Canadian Forum, Grube became its editor from 1937 to 1941. It was during his tenure at the magazine that it became the main media outlet for the LSR's publications.