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Bert Hamilton received his master’s degree from the University of Toronto, where he studied English literature.

On Feb. 18, 1944, all hell broke loose at the University of Manitoba, in Winnipeg.

That day an anonymous anti-war poem called Atrocities appeared in a student literary supplement. It referred to the Second World War, then in its fifth year, as "a futile, very ugly game" that has "no heroes, only dead men."

But the poet saved his worst for the politicians. It would be a matter of rejoicing, the poem reads, "if only the tortures inflicted upon these men were inflicted upon these [sic] on the home front."

One outraged professor reportedly interrupted his lecture, pointed to a tree through the window and told the class that whoever published that poem deserved to be hanged.

The Winnipeg Free Press condemned the poem in an editorial, noting that "for much less flagrant utterances, men have been sent to jail in Canada."

Under pressure, the university launched an investigation. Officials soon discovered, to their surprise, that the poet was none other than the president of the student union, Bert Hamilton.

Despite that controversy, the defiant poet went on to become a distinguished professor and literary authority. He died on June 14 in Kingston, just a few weeks short of his 95th birthday.

Looking back on the Atrocities furor years later, Dr. Hamilton wrote that he had been "sickened" by reports that Allied soldiers were being tortured in Japanese prisoner of war camps.

"I remember protesting against old men sending the young to fight," he recalled in 1975. "I thought then and still do, that people should live by the decisions they make, not force others to do so."

Despite the initial uproar, passions eventually cooled. Mr. Hamilton and the supplement editor, Jack Ludwig, later a novelist, were allowed to complete their studies. But they could only receive their degrees after they were honourably discharged from the military or completed community service. Both did. The young poet had already signed up to join the Royal Canadian Navy, and went on to serve aboard a destroyer until war's end, accompanying convoys to and from England.

Albert Charles Goddard was born in Winnipeg on July 20, 1921, and raised in the city's North End. His father, Clifford Goddard, died of pneumonia when Bert, an only child, was very young. His mother, Mary (née Briggs), was forced to find work as a store clerk to support them. A few years later, she married George Hamilton.

Because of the family's tight finances, his son Malcolm says, Bert knew that the only way he could afford university was to earn scholarships.

"That's exactly what he did," Malcolm recalls. "He always did extremely well [in school], so he got scholarships to study at the U of M, the U of T, then Cambridge."

Bert Hamilton received his master's degree from the University of Toronto, where he studied English literature with the renowned literary critic Northrop Frye. He earned his doctorate at Cambridge University then went on to become an authority on the 16th-century English poet Edmund Spenser, best known for his epic poem The Faerie Queene. He later produced the authoritative edition of that poem and also edited the one-volume Spenser Encyclopedia.

He met his future wife, Mary McFarlane, in Winnipeg. They married in 1950 and later had four sons, Ian, Malcolm, Peter and Ross.

In 1952, Dr. Hamilton began teaching at the University of Washington, in Seattle. In 1968, he accepted a teaching job at Queen's University, in Kingston, motivated by concerns that his sons could be drafted into the U.S. Army and sent to fight in Vietnam, and a desire to return to Canada. He taught there until his retirement in 1989.

Dr. Hamilton was renowned among family and friends for his hiking and canoeing trips in the Rockies and the High Arctic. His son Ross says his father continued to hike well into his 80s from their cottage on Buck Lake, north of Kingston.

"He enjoyed many hikes with family and friends, as long as they agreed never to walk on an established trail but rather 'bushwhack' across the ridges and swamps of Frontenac Provincial Park.

"Throughout his life, he maintained that following a trail was a moral failing," Ross says.

By all accounts, Dr. Hamilton's focus in life was on ideas and experiences rather than on material things. This was a fortunate trait, as his bad-tempered parrot, Jimmy, had a habit of shredding furniture and picture frames with his beak. Nor did Dr. Hamilton care about driving the latest car, preferring well-used jalopies whose radiators would often boil over. When he tried to trade in one heap, hoping to get $50, the garage instead offered a toaster.

What he did care about was his wife, Mary. When she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in the 1990s, Dr. Hamilton refused to put her in a care facility, even when she was in a wheelchair and could no longer recognize anyone.

"Long after Mary lost the ability to converse normally," recalls daughter-in-law Victoria Barclay, "she was still able to appreciate poetry.

"Each day, Bert would read aloud to her, but he would pause near the end and let her fill in the final line."

He looked after Mary for 20 years, until her death in 2014. A few years before his own death, Dr. Hamilton's sons finally persuaded him to write about his life. The autobiography runs just 30 pages.

"Even at the age of 93, he could still write beautifully," Malcolm says, "but the fact is that he never really liked talking about himself."

The Atrocities controversy was later mentioned in Barry Broadfoot's 1974 oral history book Six War Years, and in more detail in the 2002 book Professing English, by Sandra Djwa, about the life of Roy Daniells (he of the tree-hanging quote). But the man at the centre said little about the poem in his later years. His son Ross remained convinced that his father held onto his anti-war feelings throughout his life.

Bert Hamilton took his final trip in January to attend his grandson's baptism in California. The trip included a visit to the Sierra Madre Mountains.

After gazing at one peak and what appeared to be its sheer vertical drop, the 94-year-old Dr. Hamilton remarked, "I would have enjoyed skiing down that mountain."

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