John Bland (architect)

John Bland FRAIC (13 November 1911 – 26 March 2002) was a Canadian architect and educator. He played a fundamental role in transforming architectural education in Canada, spending more than five decades teaching at the McGill School of Architecture including a 31-year tenure as director,^[1] under which Bland transformed the School from a Beaux-Arts institution into one based on contemporary design principles. He also introduced the first Canadian graduate programs in Architecture.^[2] Many important individuals in architecture learned under Bland, including Arthur Erickson and Moshe Safdie,^[3] as well as the heads of architecture schools in at least six countries. In addition to his teaching career, Bland was a practicing architect, working alongside Harold Spence-Sales prior to joining McGill and collaborating with many Montreal architects on other projects throughout his tenure. He was the president of the Province of Quebec Association of Architects in 1953, and served on the council from 1942 to 1954. He was also a member of the Council of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) from 1950 to 1954, and was elected to the RAIC College of Fellows in 1954 and the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA) in 1967.^[4]