English At 50 | University of Waterloo

The University of Waterloo contributed greatly to the formation of Bill Davey’s career (BA 1969, MA 1972, PhD at the University of Ottawa), providing him with not only the skills but also the support he needed to thrive in academia.

Initially, he chose Waterloo for the major difference he saw between it and other universities. Because UW was a new university, its classes were smaller and more personal. Students and faculty mingled in an environment of cooperation, which is something most other universities could not provide at the time. Once he began pursuing a Master’s degree, Bill became interested in working with Dr. Laurence Cummings, who was first at St. Jerome’s and later with the School of Architecture. His work with Dr. Cummings allowed him to learn about editing, as this was a research interest of Dr. Cummings. They worked on a sixteenth-century poetic miscellany as an MA thesis.

Bill enjoyed all of his classes at UW, but he did have a few favourite professors. Dr. Hibbard, who taught Shakespeare and Jacobean drama, had an “amazing grasp” of the plays and poetry of the period; Dr. Gordon Slethaug, a professor of American literature, who was a great lecturer and gave his students a series of interactive exercises to complete in addition to the usual seminars and papers; Dr. Cummings, an inspiring teacher, who required his students to engage with each other’s work (“student A was a responder to student B’s paper, and student B was a responder to student C’s paper, and so on”); Dr. Roman Dubinski, who specialized in seventeenth-century poetry and prose; and Dr. Neil Hultin, who taught a great course on heroic literature and Beowulf and encouraged students to write outside of their comfort zones. All of these professors helped develop Bill’s skill as a researcher and teacher, and he remembers them as being supportive and well qualified.

He also remembers the camaraderie among the graduate students during his time here, recalling that all the MAs shared an office in which they could interact even if they did not have classes together. Later, Bill was lucky enough to be assigned an office that he shared with just one other student; this allowed him to work on his thesis in a relatively quiet place.

After earning his MA, Bill completed a PhD in medieval literature at the University of Ottawa. Academic positions were scarce at the time, but after a few years of part-time and sessional teaching, he received a tenure-track position at Cape Breton University, where he worked for twenty-three years before retiring in June of 2009. Although he taught a variety of courses, he most enjoyed teaching the medieval classes and the history of the English Language.

Today, Bill and his wife Heather live in Sydney, Nova Scotia, where he continues to work as a research associate at the university. Currently he is finishing a co-edited dictionary of Cape Breton English, similar to those published by the University of Toronto Press for Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island variants of the English language.

Dr. Bill Davey (BA 1969, MA 1972)