 In Canada Hughes is recognized as one of the central figures of early Canadian sociology (Helmes-Hayes 2000).Hughes is, however, more commonly associated with the Chicago school, as he returned to the University of Chicago in 1938 and became a core figure at its sociology department (Abbott 1999).He is recognized as either teacher or mentor to numerous well-known scholars associated with the Chicago tradition of qualitative, interactionist sociology, including Howard S. Becker, Erving Goffman, Anselm Strauss and Eliot Freidson (Chapoulie 1996).