Modris Eksteins
Modris Eksteins (born 1943 in Latvia) is a Canadian historian with a special interest in German history and modern culture. His works include Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (1989), which won the Ferguson Prize and the Trillium Book Award, and Walking Since Daybreak: A Story of Eastern Europe, World War II and the Heart of Our Century (1999), which juxtaposes the history of World War II and Latvia with personal memoir, and won the Pearson Writers' Trust Non-Fiction Prize.
After immigrating to Canada as a child, Eksteins, son of a Baptist minister, settled first in Winnipeg and then in Toronto, where he attended Upper Canada College on scholarship and University of Toronto (Trinity College). He later went to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He is a professor of history at University of Toronto Scarborough. He is married, has four children and a Great Pyrenees. He is highly regarded amongst students for his teaching style.