Canadian military historian and author Tim Cook passed away on Oct. 25. The 53-year-old historian at the Canadian War Museum lost his fight against Hodgkin’s disease after battling it valiantly for 14 years.

This was a huge loss for not only Canadian military history, but Canadian history in general. There are experienced and talented historians in Canada, as well as up-and-coming historians with various specialties and areas of interest. Cook’s death left some enormous shoes to fill. It will be difficult to find someone who is just the right size.

Cook was “one of Canada’s most prolific, best known, and influential historians and authors,” according to an Oct. 26 statement by Caroline Dromaguet, the museum’s president and CEO. She also described him as a “passionate ambassador both for the Museum and for Canadian military history.” and that “he has forever left his own mark on history.”

Very true. It’s worth reprinting the entire paragraph from the museum’s statement that contained a snapshot of his biography. It went as follows:

“He published 19 books and dozens of scholarly articles and contributed hundreds of conference presentations, public addresses, and media interviews. Some of his books won the Ottawa Book Award for Literary Non-Fiction (four-time winner), the J. W. Dafoe Book Prize (two-time winner), the C. P. Stacey Award (two-time winner), and the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction. His book The Good Allies was one of five shortlisted for the 2025 Lionel Gelber Prize for the world’s best non-fiction works about foreign policy. He served as editor of Studies in Canadian Military History, a book series published by the University of British Columbia (UBC) Press in partnership with the Museum. For his contributions to Canadian history, he has been recognized with the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, the Minister of Veterans Affairs Commendation, and the Governor General’s History Award. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a Member of the Order of Canada.”

This is a rather impressive resume, especially considering the bulk of his work and research was produced upon joining the Canadian War Museum in 2002.

I own two of his books, Vimy: The Battle and the Legend (2017) and The Fight For History: 75 Years of Forgetting, Remembering, and Remaking Canada’s Second World War (2020). The latter was purchased in the remainder section of a bookstore late last year, not long after Cook and I had lightly connected on social media. It’s an exceptional read about how the Second World War “remade Canada into a wealthy middle power” and set it on a “new trajectory.” The first line of the opening chapter, “How wars end shapes the way they are remembered,” is worth the price of admission alone.

Cook was a talented writer and historian when it came to analyzing the Canadian military. Very much in the mold of David Bercuson, J.L. Granatstein, Donald Graves, Desmond Morton and others. His ability to explain complex historical ideas and multi-faceted concepts in simple, plain language to wide swaths of readers was a unique skill that can’t be easily replicated in the academic world.

“His passing is a huge blow to the country’s cultural fabric,” Canadian historian and author J.D.M. Stewart wrote for the Literary Review of Canada’s Bookworm Substack on Nov. 8. “Both Canada and Canadian history needed him. He was one of the very few who could move military history from the printed page into a wider conversation.”

Indeed, it was Cook’s personal mission to bring Canadian history to life in digestible bits and bites. “I’m an academic-trained historian…but part of this is having the pleasure of working at the Canadian War Museum. Our job is to present history for all Canadians, and you have to make it relevant to people,” he told the Ottawa Citizen’s Blair Crawford on Dec. 29, 2014. “I realized that people wanted their history but we, as academics, weren’t giving it to them. We were publishing in obscure journals or it was too theoretical for them. That convinced me to focus my interest in the eyewitness accounts – those powerful diaries and memos and letters. I decided that I would try something different. I thought why not? Why not write history that people want to read?”

Cook acknowledged that this explanation “sounds silly, but in academia, you’re not encouraged to do that.” As he went on to say, “the story isn’t as important as the analysis. I do try to do both: the analysis is woven all through my narratives. I read all the latest scholarship. I know what the arguments are. But to me, that story is important.”

This, in effect, is what the vast majority of Canadian historians need to do going forward. They have to emphasize storytelling as the primary method of capturing a reader’s interest from cover-to-cover and use analysis in a secondary fashion. The art of telling a good story creates a personal and emotional connection to the topic and source material. It will help ensure that history comes alive for readers now and in the future.

Let’s hope this happens. Not only for Tim Cook’s sake, but all of us who care about preserving the lessons and legacy of Canadian history and our military.

Michael Taube, a long-time newspaper columnist and political commentator, was a speechwriter for former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper.