TOY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2005-01-13 published
ROWAN,
Donald
Charles
Peacefully at the Trenton Hospital on Monday, January 10th, 2005
at the age of 81 years. Don, beloved husband of Sandra (née
GOODFELLOW)
of Belleville, and of the late Leona (née
BRAD,) 1990. Loving
father of John and his wife Linda of Alliston, and Sharon and
her husband Craig
TOY of Richmond Hill. Cherished grandfather
of David (Alana), and Michael (Devon). Dear brother of Jane (late
Wally FLETCHER,) and Ann
ROWAN. He will be sadly missed by his
step-sons Doug, David and Donald and their families. Visitation
will be held at Scott Funeral Home "Brampton Chapel", 289 Main
St. N., 905-451-1100, on Thursday, January 13th, 2005 from 7-9
p.m. A private family service will be held at a later date at
St. James Cemetery, Toronto. In memory of Don, donations to the
Canadian Diabetes Association or to the York South Association
for Community Living would be appreciated. Sign a book of condolences
at www.obituariestoday.com
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TOYE o@ca.on.middlesex_county.london.london_free_press 2005-11-24 published
McNORGAN,
Kenneth
Leo "
Ken"
At University Hospital on Wednesday, November 23, 2005, Kenneth
Leo (Ken) McNORGAN, age 71, died peacefully with his family beside
him. Dear husband of Cynthia for 49 years. Loving father of Karen
(Steve) TOYE, Jane
McNORGAN (Kevin
CLARK), Barbara (Dave)
PELLANDA,
Paul (Caroline)
McNORGAN and John (Kim)
McNORGAN. Dear grandfather
of Ryan, Alysen and Trevor
CLARK,
Jon,
Jeff and James
TOYE, Sara
and Nicholas
PELLANDA, and Emma and Keegan
McNORGAN. Dear brother
of Gerald (Ronny)
McNORGAN.
Predeceased by his parents Paul
McNORGAN
(1980) and Helen
McNORGAN (2002;) brothers Clare (1990,) Carl
(1993), Keith (1998), and Gilbert (2004); and infant grand_son
Jacob TOYE (2003.) A life long resident of London, Ken served
in the Royal Canadian Navy as one of Canada's first submariners
on the H.M.S. Amphian. Ken retired from Labatt Breweries after
30 years of service. He was an Amateur Boxing Coach at the Memorial
Boys and Girls Club and at East London Boxing Club for more than
25 years. He reached National Coach status representing Canada
at numerous international events. In his retirement, Ken enjoyed
travelling, camping, "puttering around", and his Friendship with
Bill W. Visitors will be received at John T. Donohue Funeral
Home, 362 Waterloo Street at King Street, on Friday from 2-4
and 7-9 o'clock. Funeral Mass at St. Andrew the Apostle Church,
1 Fallon Lane, London, Saturday morning at 10 o'clock. Cremation
with inurnment in St. Peter's Cemetery at a later date. If you
wish to make a donation, please consider the London Regional
Cancer Program.
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TOYE o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2005-05-29 published
Sheila EGOFF,
Librarian and Academic 1918-2005
Authority on children's literature goaded Canadian writers and
publishers to overcome the curse of mediocrity, writes Sandra
MARTIN. In the end, their books came of age and are now among
the world's best
By Sandra MARTIN,
Saturday,
May 28, 2005, Page S9
Children's literature is one of our international success stories,
so it's easy to forget how stony the field was in the middle
years of the last century. We published 47 children's books in
1968 compared to 3,874 American and 2,075 British titles, according
to an incisive paper written by librarian Sheila
EGOFF for the
Royal Ontario Commission on Book Publishing.
"There was a small handful of mostly boring books," remembers
Janet LUNN, author of The Root Cellar and Shadow in Hawthorn
Bay and the first children's editor to be hired by a Canadian
publishing company. "If you were going to stack them up against
what was coming out of the United States and Britain, it was
pretty tedious."
But stack them up against international standards was precisely
what Professor
EGOFF did in landmark books such as The Republic
of Childhood, Only Connect, Thursday's Child and Worlds Within.
"If you think a mediocre book can do something for children,
I'll ask you why a good book can't do it better," she was fond
of saying. Age did not temper her critical tastes.
In 1984, the year after she retired as professor emerita of youth
literature at University of British Columbia, she railed at the
offerings in the children's sections of many Canadian libraries,
arguing that it might be better for teenagers to read nothing
at all than something like Conan the Barbarian, "a pseudo-scientific
series about a macho hero who is racist and everything else."
One can only wonder how she would react to the current debate
about young people's literacy scores in Canada.
But Prof. EGOFF also loved a party, especially when the wine
was flowing. She was an inspired lecturer and a devoted friend
and colleague to generations of librarians, including University
of British Columbia professor Judith Saltman, broadcaster Bill
Richardson and writers Kit Pearson and Sarah Ellis.
"Her students were her family," said Ms. Pearson. But affection
didn't compromise her standards when it came to marking papers
or evaluating literary works. "I was almost afraid to submit
my first manuscript," Ms. Pearson said, "because I knew from
Sheila what a children's book should be."
"She had a way of deciding your destiny," said Ms. Ellis, who
was diverted from a career as a rare books librarian by her exposure
to Prof. EGOFF. "
Once you got in her gaze, there was no looking
away." Ms. Ellis, who still works part-time as a children's librarian,
admitted that she wasn't convinced that Prof.
EGOFF really liked
her award-winning novels. "Deep in her heart, she thought that
anything other than being a children's librarian is a bit of
a comedown."
"She captivated us," said Prof. Saltman this week. Eventually
Prof. Saltman became her mentor's research assistant, then her
collaborator and finally her successor at what is now called
the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies. "I feel
as though I have lost a third parent," she said.
Sheila Agnes
EGOFF was born in Auburn, Maine, the only daughter
of Dane and Lucy Joyce
EGOFF.
After her father, a Bulgarian immigrant,
drowned when Sheila was 1 and her brother George 4, her mother
moved back to her home town of Galt (now Cambridge) in southwestern
Ontario.
Money was scarce, said Prof.
EGOFF's nephew John. He
thinks this early hardship may explain why his aunt and his father
both had such an intense drive to succeed. His father turned
it inward, doing his utmost to provide for his family, while
his aunt strived for professional achievements, choosing a career
over marriage and family.
Prof. EGOFF, who grew up Catholic in a very Protestant town,
credited her passion for reading with her discovery of the local
public library at the age of 8. As a high school student she
worked there part-time for 25 cents an hour, before earning a
diploma in librarianship in 1938 at the University of Toronto.
She returned to Galt for a job in that same library before moving
back to Toronto in 1942 to work at Boys and Girls House under
those ace practitioners of her vocation, Alice
KANE and Lillian
H. SMITH (author of the classic text The Unreluctant Years.)
At the same time, she studied for her bachelor's degree, graduating
in 1948 from the U of T.
After taking a study leave from the Toronto Public Library, she
earned a library diploma at the University of London in 1949.
She was eternally grateful to her older brother George, says
her nephew John, for financing her postgraduate studies. Always
thinking, always planning and strategizing, Prof.
EGOFF was the
catalyst in negotiating the transfer of English librarian John
Osborne's famed collection of early children's books to the Toronto
Public
Library in 1949 in honour of Ms.
SMITH.
Thinking she needed a change, Prof.
EGOFF crossed the threshold
into adult services and put in a five-year stint as a reference
librarian (from 1952 to 57) followed by a move to Ottawa where
she worked for four years for the Canadian Library Association.
That's where she was on a sweltering day in 1961 when she received
a phone call from Sam Rothstein, founding director of the School
of Librarianship at the University of British Columbia.
As Prof. EGOFF loved to tell the story: It was 90 degrees, the
humidex was in the stratosphere and she was lying naked on the
bed in her tiny Ottawa apartment fantasizing about air conditioning.
Prof. Rothstein mentioned that it was balmy and 68 in Vancouver,
the Bolshoi was coming to town and how would she like to be the
fledgling faculty's specialist in children's literature and library
services? To which she allegedly replied: "When's the next plane?"
Prof. EGOFF taught at University of British Columbia for more
than 25 years, becoming the first full-time tenured professor
of children's literature at a Canadian university. In 1964, a
group calling itself the Children's Recreational Reading Council
of Toronto commissioned her to write a book about Canadian children's
books as its centennial project. William
TOYE, then trade editor
of Oxford University Press, agreed to work with her and to publish
the text. It was a fortuitous combination, for Mr.
TOYE, known
in the trade for his ruthless blue pencil and his insistence
on clarity, was himself an expert in the subject. It was the
beginning of a long editorial relationship and an even longer
Friendship that included three editions of The Republic of Childhood
and two of Only Connect: Readings on Children's Literature.
"Nobody with her authority or background had written about Canadian
children's books," he said this week. "She had read every Canadian
children's book and she certainly knew all the English and American
classics." What she brought to her discussion of children's books
was honesty, Mr.
TOYE said. "It wasn't that she was destructive.
She could see where the quality lay and where it was missing."
Back then most people expected to have our books praised and
encouraged simply for existing. "She was extremely crusty and
quite hostile," says Patsy Aldana, publisher of Groundwood Books.
"She was not a supporter of Canadian books, she was a supporter
of quality publishing and she felt, with quite a bit of justification,
that the books were very bad." Nevertheless, Ms. Aldana feels
that her "goading" had a "bracing" effect on younger writers
and publishers. "We felt very embattled and attacked, but I think
there was also a real sense that this is not how it has to be
and we are going to prove her wrong." And in the end, Canadian
children's books did come of age and Prof.
EGOFF "responded to
what we did and became a supporter of many of our authors."
Mr. TOYE agrees. "Children's books were her life and anything
she could do -- to talk to people about them, to write about
them, to teach -- she would do and in the process she changed
the standard of appreciation of children's books in Canada."
By the time Ms.
EGOFF retired in 1983, she had organized the
Pacific Rim Conference on Children's Literature in 1976 (bringing
participants from China, Japan and Australia as well as North
and South America), developed five graduate courses in children's
literature and library services, inspired generations of librarians,
and written or edited several seminal texts. Retirement certainly
didn't mean putting her vocation behind her. If anything, it
gave her more time to write and to edit and to work with "her
spies in the field" as she called the ranks of children's librarians
she had trained.
About five years ago, her eyesight failed because of macular
degeneration. Scores of Friends and students read to her, especially
the annual nominees for the British Columbia book award named
in her honour. She continued to write despite failing health
and, with the help of Wendy Sutton, finished the manuscript for
My Life with Children's Books, which will be published by Orca
Books this autumn.
Two weeks ago she phoned her old friend and editor William
TOYE
and asked him to write the preface to her memoirs. He said, "It
was a beautiful closure to our Friendship."
Sheila Agnes
EGOFF was born in Auburn, Maine, on January 20,
1918. She died of kidney failure on May 22, 2005, in hospital
in Vancouver. She was 87. She is survived by three nephews and
their families.
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TOYE o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2005-01-19 published
TOYE,
Eric "
Bruce"
Cherished husband and best friend of 37 years to Marlene (nee
FREY,) was called home by God, suddenly on January 17, 2005.
We rejoice that he has been released from his physical limitations.
Bruce will also be greatly missed by his sister Beverley
TOYE
of Prescott. He was predeceased by his parents Eric and Ellener
TOYE.
Friends are invited to share their memories of Bruce with
his family at the Edward R. Good Funeral Home, 171 King Street
South, Waterloo on Wednesday, January 19 from 7-9 p.m. and Thursday,
January 20 from 2-4 and 7-9 p.m. The funeral service to celebrate
Bruce's life and faith will be held at the Wallenstein Bible
Chapel, Wallenstein on Friday, January 21 at 2: 00 p.m. Interment
to follow at Hawkesville Cemetery. In memory of Bruce, donations
may be made to Everyday Publications, MSC Canada Inc. Relief
and Development Fund, or the Kidney Foundation of Canada, Western
Ontario Chapter and can be arranged by calling the funeral home
at 519-745-8445 or www.edwardrgood.com
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TOYE o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2005-04-30 published
TAILOR/TAYLOR,
Muriel
Irene
(Former resident of Richmond Hill for 55 years) Peacefully at
York Central Hospital, Richmond Hill on Friday, April 29th, 2005.
Beloved wife of Harold of 64 years. Dear mother of Marilyn and
her husband Bob
KENT and
Jo-Anne and her husband Jerry
TOYE.
Will be dearly missed by her 5 grandchildren and 6 great-grandchildren.
Sister of Marjorie
JOLICEAUR and the late Harvey, Howard and
Lloyd. At Muriel's request, there will be no service.
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