A Rare Bird on the Earth: Essays in Honour of Ramsay Cook grew out of an Ottawa conference in the fall of 1997, which was organized by two of his former PhD students, Michael Behiels and Marcel Martel. The essayists are all former PhD students of Professor Cook's, and their work reflects the range of Cook's scholarly interest as well as the transformation of the historical profession in Canada following the growth of graduate history programmes in the late 1960s. This collection is both a tribute to Ramsay Cook and a testimony to the maturation of Canadian historiography.