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By Ruth Panofsky

I enter the lecture hall, survey the new cohort, and suddenly see myself as I once was: a first-year student looking attentive, hopeful, and uncertain.

I was seventeen when I started university, excited to be living away from home, and relieved to be done with high school science and math. I was primed to immerse myself in the study of literature. But I was also apprehensive—just like today’s students.

My concern was not unfounded. Courses were challenging. There was so much reading, writing, and exam preparation crammed into a tight schedule. And I lacked confidence in my ability to meet these new demands.

One professor helped steer me toward success.

His name was Michael Thompson, and I met him soon after arriving at �Ӱ�ԭ�� in fall 1976, when I took his introductory English course. Professor Thompson, as I called him then, had a penetrating intellect. His lectures, delivered sans notes, were riveting. Even as an inexperienced student, I recognized his rare ability to enliven literary history. He had facts at the ready, but he gave them depth and colour. He was also an incisive reader of poetry and prose, and his taste was eclectic—Wallace Stevens and Raymond Queneau were favourite authors.

His skilful instruction was all the more remarkable given his physiology. Michael twitched and turned. It seemed he was all movement, which he struggled to contain. To do so, he sat himself down in a chair at the front of the classroom. With one forearm gripping the other across his torso, he remained fixed in his seat until his lecture reached an elegant finish.

He managed to calm his stutter, too. While he spoke, he faced forward with eyes closed. Occasionally, he glanced upward through thick glasses. But he carefully avoided our gaze, for that might invite questions or comments and derail his delivery.

I was both fascinated and untroubled by this performance. Michael’s teaching was so enthralling—he matched erudition with practiced bodily restraint—that I barely noticed his idiosyncrasies. Rather, I was seized by his mind.

In third year, I took a second course with him—a seminar on modernism. By then, I had determined that literary study meant everything to me. Michael fostered this devotion—I had learned it from him, after all. In the Arts Tower (now the Dunton Tower) during office hours, he recommended further reading and commented constructively on my essays. When he urged me toward precise analysis and lucid style, I felt buoyed rather than discouraged. Later, he wrote letters of reference when I applied to master’s programs. In short, he became a mentor.

Once I completed my degree and moved to Toronto, Michael’s support did not wane. We became regular correspondents. He would not leave a letter unanswered. Today, I marvel at his benevolence—that he took the time to write a former undergraduate student who shared his love of books. We exchanged letters so frequently that I amassed a fine stack of light blue airmail envelopes, which I read and reread over the years. Sadly, those missives disappeared during a recent move. I should have guarded that record of our friendship.

Michael even attended my wedding. He and his wife drove from Ottawa to Montreal, where I was married. His gift of Roman Vishniac’s book of piercing photographs of pre-war Jewish life in Eastern Europe, A Vanished World, was chosen with care. I cherish it still.

I learned recently that Michael had operated a Chandler and Price platen printing press—in 1968, he set a book of poetry for Ladysmith Press at the painstaking pace of four hours per page—and two decades later donated it to �Ӱ�ԭ��. The printing press, which had once been the property of the Pembroke����������������, was in a state of disrepair. It was twice restored, in the mid-1980s and in 1991, and is on the main floor of the MacOdrum Library. I suspect Michael would be tickled to know that I now take a scholarly interest in book publishing and print culture.

Michael Thompson died in 1992. In response to my final letter, his wife wrote to say that he had succumbed to cancer. I was shocked by the disclosure. He had not told me of his illness. 

Over time, I came to see that Michael had not wanted to burden me with knowledge of his suffering. My champion to the end, he spared me the sadness of sensing his nearness to death.

I still feel his presence as both ally and exemplar. And when I greet expectant first-year students, I recall his influence on my life.