Professing English at Ubc: The Legacy of Roy Daniells and Garnett Sedgewick

by Sandra Djwa

In her University of BC Sedgewick Lecture for 1999, Sandra Djwa relates the life and times of two illustrious professors of English who were among the most influential teachers in Canada’s history. From the 1920s to the 1970s, Garnett Sedgewick and Roy Daniells shaped the way tens of thousands of students experienced literature. In her discussion of the Earle Birney-Roy Daniells feud, Djwa sheds new light on that battle of titans. Djwa also extends her research beyond the personalities of Sedgewick and Daniells to discuss how both men participated in the development of an ideal of the humanities in Canadian universities. Indeed, this lecture, complete with photos, is a contribution to the developing history of the Canadian university.

32 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Sandra Djwa was born in Newfoundland and completed a B.Ed. at UBC (1964), and a Ph.D. (1968). She joined the English department at Simon Fraser in 1968 and taught Canadian literature until 2005.

Best known for her essays on poets and novelists (Atwood, Cohen, Lawrence), and as a biographer and editor, Djwa co-founded the Association of Canadian and Quebec Literatures in 1973, and wrote the annual survey of “Poetry” for Letters in Canada, UTQ, 1980-84. In 1981 she established the E.J. Pratt editorial committee and co-edited Complete Poems of E.J. Pratt with Gordon Moyles, and Selected Poems of E.J. Pratt with Zailig Pollock and W.J. Keith. She was Chair of the English Department at SFU between 1986 and 1994, President of the Chairs and Heads of English in 1989-90, and the first recipient of the Trimark Women’s Mentor Award for mentoring younger colleagues in 1999. She has been a member of the Royal Society of Canada since 1994.

She has published ten books including three major biographies. Her life of F.R. Scott, The Politics of the Imagination (1987), was short listed for the Hubert Evans B.C. Non-Fiction prize. Fifteen years after first publication, this biography was translated into French by Florence Bernard without any change in content as F.R. Scott: Une vie (2001). Highly praised in Québec, it was short-listed for the Governor-General's Award for French translation. Djwa has also edited and introduced the memoirs of Carl F. Klinck, Giving Canada a Literary History (1991), and edited and introduced various critical editions of E.J. Pratt's poetry.

Djwa's 2012 biography of poet P.K. Page, A Journey With No Maps, was shortlisted for the 2013 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction, and won the 2013 Governor General Award for Non-Fiction.