[1] Hodgins taught Canadian history and worked in the history departments of Prince of Wales College and at the University of Western Ontario as well as with Trent University's Leslie M. Frost Centre for Canadian Heritage and Development Studies.

[2][3] He was a specialist in the study of John Sandfield Macdonald, Temagami, Charles Alfred Marie Paradis [FR], the colonization of Canada, Camp Wanapitei, Canadian federalism, and his home town of Peterborough, Ontario.

[5] Hodgins met Carol, his wife-to-be, in Charlottetown, while working at the Prince of Wales College.

[3][1] Hodgins was one of over 300 people arrested in 1989 for taking part in a protest of a road expansion in Temagami.

[1] Hodgins died on August 8, 2019, at Peterborough Regional Health Centre, aged 88, after what was presumed to be a series of small strokes.