English At 50 | University of Waterloo

Jim Donohue How many people can say that they wrote part of a Shakespeare play? Although Father James (Jim) Donohue (BA 1978) might not make a claim that bold, he once tried to imitate the Bard’s style convincingly enough to enter a Shakespeare-themed party held at Professor Ruth Levitsky's home. At the end of each school year, Dr. Levitsky held this party for her students. Everyone would dress up as a character from one of Shakespeare's plays and memorize a few lines spoken by that character. Jim and his friends dressed up as the three witches from Macbeth. Prior to the party, he was upset with his friends because they had not memorized their lines, but when they arrived, Jim became nervous and forgot his own lines. All three made up their own new lines on the spot, and their creativity won them a prize for comedy.

Jim originally began his post-secondary education at another institution. But after only three weeks of classes in the pre-med program at McMaster University, he transferred to the University of Waterloo and studied English through St. Jerome's University College, living in the seminary at Resurrection College.

In a memorable class with Sister Leon White in St. Jerome's, Jim recalls writing the bibliography for one of his assignments on the blackboard. His bibliography was very good with practically no mistakes, but Sister Leon was determined to find an error. She looked over the blackboard, reading carefully, when all of a sudden she found a mistake and announced to the class that the word “Dorothy” had been spelled wrong. Jim was amazed at her ability to catch even the smallest mistakes.

Jim also recalls when Sister Leon told the class about a lunch to which she had gone with some of the other nuns. At the restaurant, a server approached the nuns and asked “Are yous ready to order?” Sister Leon was taken aback by the server’s poor grammar. One student asked her, “What did you say to her? ‘You ain't read the menu yet?'”

Jim Donohue Three of the English courses Jim took, all taught by the same professor, had a reputation for being difficult. Professor Doug Letson taught the first-year course Isolation and Alienation, second-year Old English, and third-year Middle English courses. However, Jim recalls that Dr. Letson made students feel like they could do the work and learn the material.

Upon graduating from UW, Jim joined the Resurrectionists and became a priest. He then worked in the parish at St. Aloysius in Kitchener. Some time later, he attended graduate school and earned his PhD at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.

Currently, Jim is teaching in the Theology Department at Mount St. Mary's University (the second oldest Catholic University in the United States) in Emmitsburg, Maryland. At UW, Jim learned that “when you are an English student the two things that you learn are how to read and write.” He had many teachers who were good models and strives in his own classroom to teach students to read and write well.