The Icelandic Canadian - 01.03.2003, Page 13

Vol. 57 #4
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
149
No two hundred kids in a lecture hall. The
profs knew you by name. It was easier to
make friends. Also, United was known as
a teaching college. There was a real effort
on the part of the profs to teach well.
Many of them were delightfully eccentric.
While at United I joined the Creative
Writing Club. Prof. Hallstead and Dr.
Swayze were in charge. They did a mar-
velous job of teaching us to discuss each
other’s work. They were encouraging and
kind while being insightful. They made us
think.
It would be hard to overemphasize the
role the professors played in my life.
Gordon Blake unravelled the mysteries of
economics. David Owen despaired of my
ever grasping the difference between truth
and validity, but persevered, and I’ve used
his course in logic all through my career.
The English courses were like a series of
miracles as I learned to see beyond the sur-
face of stories. That’s where I learned to
love Hemingway and Maugham. Walter
Young brought the Winnipeg strike alive.
Also important were the events that
occurred in the main hall. That’s where I
first saw ballet and attended live musical
concerts with professional musicians.
Nina: What did it feel like to receive
an honourary doctorate from University of
Winnipeg?
Bill: In many ways, the honourary
doctorate was the highlight of my life. I
think that was because it was from my
Alma Mater. There is something special
about returning to one’s undergraduate
institution in triumph. Especially when
you’ve been a C student.
Nina: And becoming a Fellow of the
Royal Society? How did you react to that?
Bill: Stunned amazement when I
received a letter saying I’d been elected and
did I wish to accept. Never, in my wildest
dreams, had it ever occurred to me that I’d
be elected to a prestigious academic soci-
ety. Even after teaching at the University of
Victoria for 29 years, I feel like an interlop-
er in the academic world. My self image is
of a small town boy who learned to write
stories about the people and places he
knows and somehow lucked into a great
job where they let him teach other people
to write and pay him an astounding
amount of money to do so. I keep waiting
for someone to turn up at my office and
say, “What are you doing here? Out, out!”
That feeling among professors who come
from working class backgrounds is quite
common, I’m told.
Nina: You speak of your career as if
you just fell into it, but of course that was-
n’t the case with the many honours you’ve
received. You didn’t receive an honourary
doctorate from your Alma Mater by
chance and your name wasn’t randomly
University of Manitoba Press