Francis Reginald Scott (Frank Scott, F.R. Scott) (August 1, 1899 - January 30, 1985) was a Canadian poet, intellectual and constitutional expert. Born and raised in Quebec City, Scott witnessed the riots in the city during the Conscription Crisis of 1917. He went to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar and was influenced by the Christian Socialist ideas of R.H. Tawney and the Student Christian Movement.

He returned to Canada, settled in Montreal and studied law at McGill University eventually joining the law faculty as a professor.

The Great Depression greatly disturbed Scott and he and other intellectuals formed the League for Social Reconstruction to advocate socialist solutions in a Canadian context. Through the LSR, Scott became an influential figure in the Canadian socialist movement and a founding member of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and a contributor to the Regina Manifesto. He went on to serve as national chairman of the CCF from 1942 until 1950.

During the 1950s, Scott was an active opponent of the Duplessis regime in Quebec and went to court to fight the Padlock Law.

Scott served as dean of law from 1961 to 1964 and served on the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. In 1970 he was offered a seat in the Canadian Senate by Pierre Trudeau but declined the appointment.

He won both the 1977 Governor General's Award for non-fiction for his Essays on the Constitution and the 1981 Governor General's Award for poetry for his Collected Poems. Scott was awarded the Royal Society of Canada's Lorne Pierce Medal in 1962.

As a poet he wrote "A Villanelle for Our Time", to which Leonard Cohen added music for his album Dear Heather.

On his passing in 1985, Frank Scott was interred in Mount Royal Cemetery in Montreal.

External links

• University of Calgary biography (http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/faculties/HUM/ENGL/canada/poet/f_scott.htm)