English At 50 | University of Waterloo

Dr. Hodge and his granddaughter, Kim, who is starting her second year studies in Medicine. For Dr. Norman Hodge (BA 1965, MPHIL 1968), peaceful days communing with nature at St. Jerome's prefaced a career that took him to one of the most violently divided nations on earth. But at the time, he had no inkling of that future. “At St Jerome's the Director of Residence was Father Zach Ralston, a legendary figure, and many times he would knock on doors and ask us to go "critter watching" in the woods, to find the owls and help raise young birds and creatures whose mother had been killed. Norman remembers “Herbie, the rough legged hawk,” who they had returned to the wild. Herbie “could never sort out windows and once smashed into the glass of Notre Dame, the women's residence, when one of the nuns was praying -- and she thought she had a visit from the Holy Spirit!” Norman also had a skunk named Petunia that he had a local vet de-scent. He presented her as a gift to a primary school teacher, and he last saw Petunia wearing a bright pink ribbon.

Later in his career, Norman accepted a post teaching at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. He lived through the Soweto Uprising, a series of riots, between black youths and the South African authorities, protesting government policies in Soweto, South Africa on June 16, 1976. He then accepted the Chair position at the newly created University of Transkei, which is now Walter Sisulu University, located in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. In his time at the university, he worked as a Professor of English, a Dean of Arts, and a member of the University Council. He also published on South African black writing.

“Most of my students had no knowledge of their past, and I was able to slip by the censors a collection of stories by black South African writers titled To Kill A Man's Pride and Other Stories of Southern Africa. This collection is still in print after 25 years and has sold about a third of a million copies, introducing generations of African students to their cultural history.”

“I went to South Africa at the time of hardline apartheid, and left in 1991 when Nelson Mandela had just been released from Pollsmoor prison. Born a few kilometers away from Umtata where we lived, he visited our university soon after his release. I had the chance to meet him and to take part in filming his speech, a fitting conclusion to my leaving South Africa.”

“I was criticised, to my face and behind my back, for going to South Africa during apartheid; ironically, I was encouraged to go by the South African expatriates, and was indeed taught by a South African expatriate, Professor Walter Martin, at Waterloo. Many of my students and colleagues there are now part of the new South Africa, taking major roles in the country's development. I lived through an attempted coup and remember the sound of mortars and machine guns, and some of my students calling out “Hello, Prof!” as they rode by on army trucks to the fighting, days later appearing in class to talk about literature and language!”

Norman began his second year of studies in 1962, taking Old English, Middle English, Renaissance Literature, Literary Criticism, and Shakespeare: “In those years, all Honours English students took five English courses in each of second, third and fourth years.” Norman remembers his Old English class particularly well. Its instructor, Dr. Murray Macquarrie, was fluent in the language. To this day, Norman can recite the opening lines of Beowulf. Dr. James Carscallens taught a class in Renaissance Literature that focused on the detailed study of Spenser. The term "sweet reasonableness" still resonates with Norman because of this class. At the postgraduate level, he enjoyed the American Fiction seminar with Dr. Ken Ledbetter. “At the end of each seminar, which could become pretty heated, we all adjourned to the pub in Heidelberg for beer and sauerkraut and pork hocks and beer and beer until we all became paralytic.” This class was the reason he chose to study Hemingway as part of his American Studies doctorate program in England.

While at UW, Norman became a Senior Prefect in the St. Jerome's residence. “It was a great time because we were on campus. Homecoming was always fabulous, attending football and hockey games, (Jerry Lawless and I were undergrads together living in St Jerome's Residence, he became Professor of Mathematics at the University of Waterloo, retired last year, but still supervises graduate students while living in Toronto), helping make snow sculptures, walking into town on Thursday nights to go to the pub, following the [train] tracks there and back (the return journey very much the worse for wear), the formal dances and the informal evenings playing cards or being just stupid, are just some of the memories. We were a small university then, with lots of open spaces and fields.”

Norman completed his Honours Degree in English in 1965, then taught at St. Jerome's College and returned as a student in 1968 to pursue an MPhil degree. Upon completing the MPhil, he accepted a post at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, where he established the communication studies program. In 1970, he went to the University of Nottingham in England, reading for a PhD in American Studies after receiving a Canada Council Fellowship. He completed the PhD in 1973.

As undergraduates, Norman and some of his peers “asked Prof Keith Thomas, Head of English, what his attitude was to us as students, and he replied "I think of you as butterflies, pinned to the bulletin board, struggling away, and eventually we will pull out the pin and you will fly away free!!"”

At UW, Norman learned “to be innovative, to find a speciality certainly, but also to be a generalist. I laugh at the thought that I hold a PhD in American Studies from a British University, an MPhil, and BA (Hons) in English from a Canadian university, that I published mostly in African literature, and then taught Australian History for the final years of my teaching career!” Norman and his second wife followed their grown children to Australia in the early 1980s. In the 1990s, they were asked to help at a local school. Norman substituted for teachers in English, History, English as a Second Language, and Workplace Skills. “It was a great time through to 2006; we loved our jobs, especially working with foreign students. However, retirement loomed and we relocated with the family to Melbourne which is now home.”