John Kenneth Galbraith, world-renowned Canadian-born economist, intellect and writer, has died of natural causes at the age of 97. An academic renegade and unabashed liberal, Galbraith's career spanned seven decades and saw him work in the presidential administrations of both Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy.
His fame peaked in the 1950s thanks to his bestseller The Affluent Society, which challenged the role of capitalism in postwar America.

In this clip from a 1964 CBC Television documentary, Galbraith's wit is on rare display as he returns to his hometown in rural Ontario to share a beer with the locals, discuss the myth of the country schoolhouse and reveal the secret of making good maple syrup.

• John Kenneth Galbraith was born on Oct. 15, 1908, in Iona Station, Ont., to William Archibald Galbraith and Sarah Catherine Kendall. Galbraith's father was a farmer and a political organizer in the Elgin County area, which is about 100 kilometres southwest of London, Ont.

• In the late 1920s Galbraith enrolled in the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph, Ont., where he rose to the top of most of his classes. In 1931 he graduated with a bachelor of science degree. He accepted a scholarship at University of California at Berkley in 1933 to study agricultural economics.
• Galbraith would later say that he left Canada only because the scholarship offered him more money than any job would have at the time.

• Galbraith completed his graduate degree later in 1933 and his PhD in 1934. The same year, he started a three-year lectureship at Harvard University. He also spent a three-month internship at Oxford University where he studied under economist John Maynard Keynes.
• Not long after, he was recruited to work in the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, where he helped implement the president's New Deal which helped lift America out of the Great Depression.

• In 1937 Galbraith met and married Catherine Atwater, an American, and took out U.S. citizenship. The couple would have three sons.
• In April 1945 both his personal and professional lives were rocked when Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Galbraith was appointed to new posts within Harry S. Truman's presidency, but his moderate views on capitalism soon forced him out of the triumphant postwar administration.

• In 1948 Galbraith accepted a teaching position at Harvard University's economics faculty, where he began his successful career as a writer and political adviser.
• His book The Affluent Society caused a sensation in 1958 thanks to its criticism of what he perceived as an increasingly consumer-driven American society.

• In a 2004 episode of the CBC's Life and Times Galbraith said he always knew he had written a good book if it managed to generate "a perceptible level of groans from the very fortunate."
• After serving as a speechwriter for failed Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, Galbraith became a confidant of John. F. Kennedy. He penned speeches and served as floor manager at the 1960 Democratic Party convention where Kennedy won the presidential nomination.

• After Kennedy was sworn in as president in 1961, Galbraith was appointed U.S. ambassador to India. Once there he continued to write while carrying out his official duties.
• Kennedy's assassination in November 1963 marked the end of Galbraith's influence in Washington. Pushed out by Lyndon B. Johnson, he returned to his teaching position at Harvard.

• He would teach there until 1975 and continue to write books, including 1977's The Age of Uncertainty, but his days as an influential political thinker had come to an end.
• Still revered by liberals, Galbraith was awarded 45 honorary doctorates during his lifetime and was granted the Presidential Medal of Freedom twice. In 1997 he was made an officer of the Order of Canada.
• He would write more than a dozen books in his lifetime, including 1992's Culture of Contentment.

• Galbraith claimed his favourite book was 1964's The Scotch, a personal memoir about his time growing up in Elgin County, Ont. The book, which was both nostalgic and critical, was the inspiration for the homecoming captured in this clip.
• In 2004 Galbraith's democratic values (and sense of humour) were still strong. When asked what he thought of the re-election of U.S. president George W. Bush he said "I never thought that one day I would yearn for Ronald Reagan."

• In a February 2005 review of a biography of Galbraith in the Globe and Mail, University of Toronto economist Stephen Clarkson called him "an intellectual colossus" who was "Canada's greatest contribution to civilizing American capitalism."

Medium: Television
Program: The Observer
Broadcast Date: Oct. 20, 1964
Producer: Hugh Bremner
Guest(s): Spence Bodier, J.K. Elliot, John Kenneth Galbraith
Duration: 12:46
Photo Credits: Library and Archives Canada (PA-171623), copyright Yousuf Karsh