GLOBAL ECONOMICS
Patrick Grady
Only a Maverick Could Become Canada's Leading Free-Market Economist
June 3, 2026
Herbert Grubel has led an amazing life, which provides plenty of entertaining and informative fodder for this autobiography. His improbable rise from an impoverished childhood in war-ravaged Germany to the elite groves of academe in the United States and Canada, before detouring for a stint in the gothic halls of the Canadian Parliament, is unprecedented.
Improbably for an economist of his distinction, he ended up at the newly established Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. Ironically, it appealed to him because of its proximity to Whistler, the internationally renowned ski resort.
Along his way climbing the academic ladder, he becomes friends and colleagues with many of the most famous, and some of the most eccentric, economists of his time, as well as with the Canadian Reform Party politicians who stormed out of the west to build Canada's current Conservative Party. This supplied him with a huge trove of anecdotes to season his memoirs.
For those of you who don't know him, Herbert became the dean of free market economists in Canada and is always ready with a free-market solutions for economic problems. That is why he labels himself a “maverick” in the books title. Standing up for limited government and fighting the creep of socialism, mainly in Canada where he became associated with the conservative Fraser Institute, but also in other countries around the world, such as Kenya, South Africa, and Singapore, where he served as a visiting professor, has been the unifying theme of his career as an economist and politician and has set him apart from the progressive Canadian zeitgeist. It is probably the reason he has not gotten the professional recognition in Canada that he deserves as the most cited Canadian economist.
I almost forgot to say that the book is a real treat to read as it is very well written and readable as would be expected of someone who has managed to get as many op-eds accepted by the persnickety editors of the leading Canadian newspapers.