SANDRA MARTIN
Globe and Mail Update Last updated on Tuesday, Mar. 31, 2009 08:55PM EDT
Editor, writer and academic Constance (Connie) Rooke died Saturday night of ovarian cancer in Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto. She was 65.
Born in New York City on Nov. 14, 1942, she graduated with a bachelor's degree from Smith College in 1964, a master's degree from Tulane University two years later and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina in 1973. By then, she had met and married short story writer and novelist Leon Rooke.
Together, they went to the University of Victoria in B.C. There she edited The Malahat Review and began her illustrious career as a literary critic and a champion of Canadian literature.
After teaching at UVic for nearly two decades and serving as the first Chair of the Women's Studies Dept., she accepted a job as professor of English at the University of Guelph in 1988, and eventually became vice-president, academic of the university. She and her husband founded the Eden Mills Writer's Festival in 1988 and ran it for a decade until she became president of the University of Winnipeg in 1999.
After that job ended in 2002, the Rookes moved to Toronto where she served for two years as the President of PEN Canada and became the founding director of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at the U. of Guelph.
She was the author of Fear of the Open Heart, a volume of essays about Canadian writing and writers, and the editor of several anthologies including Night Light: Stories of Aging and Writing Away and Writing Home for PEN Canada.
Prof. Rooke is survived by her husband Leon, her son Jonathan, her brother Charles, her sister Hilary and her extended family. A private family funeral is planned followed by a celebration of her life at a later date.
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