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Elizabeth Hillman Waterston, OC, OOnt, FRSC, teacher, critic, editor (born 18 April 1922 in Montreal, QC; died 18 February 2024). Elizabeth Waterston was a leading academic in the fields of English Canadian literature, children's literature, women's literature and historical Canadian travel literature. She was also an expert on the life and work of Lucy Maud Montgomery. A long-time professor at the University of Guelph, Waterston was appointed to the Order of Ontario in 2010 and was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 2018. She was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 2011.
Career Highlights
Educated at Bryn Mawr College (MA) and the University of Toronto (BA and PhD), Elizabeth Waterston was a member of the department of English at Sir George Williams College (1945–58, now Concordia University), the University of Western Ontario (1958–67), and the University of Guelph (1967–87), where she was chair from 1974–77. After her retirement she was named professor emerita.
Waterston was a founding member of the Association of Canadian University Teachers of English and of the Association for Canadian and Québec Literatures. She was also the founding editor of Canadian Children's Literature and was the president of the Humanities Association of Canada from 1977–79. She mentored many Canadian writers in her 70-year career, including Mordecai Richler and Jane Urquhart.
Elizabeth Waterston authored numerous works, among them Survey: A Short History of Canadian Literature (1973), Gilbert Parker (1989) and Children's Literature in Canada (1992). Widely known and respected for her work as editor and critic, she co-edited with Mary Rubio the three-volume Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery (1985, 1987, 1992). Waterston also co-authored Writing a Life: L.M. Montgomery (1994). With Carrie Macmillan and Lorraine McMullen, she co-authored Silenced Sextet: Six 19th Century Women Novelists (1993).
(See also Literature in English: Teaching.)
