Frank Abbott
B.A. St. Mary's, M.A. University of British Columbia
Frank Abbott is a Canadian historian specializing in Quebec social and cultural history. His UBC M.A. thesis in the early 1980s examined the urban festival of "carnaval" and its modern revival as a tourist attraction. He is now in the process of researching and writing a PhD dissertation at SFU on rural popular culture and the Church in a small Quebec parish 1850-1900.
Though he started out as a social and cultural historian of Europe - especially France and England - and became a Canadianist almost by accident, the attraction of Canadian history and its relevance to today's issues is undeniable. A strong interest in Chinese history, philosophy and culture also drew him to study Mandarin for three years at the University of Toronto and UBC, to design Kwantlen's two Chinese history courses, and to choose Late Imperial China as one of the fields for his doctoral studies. Frank has been teaching at Kwantlen since 1988 and was involved in the creation of Kwantlen's new Bachelor of Arts degrees.
