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Dear members of REED,

I meant to send this out earlier but I found it daunting to write.  JoAnna specifically did not want a eulogy, only a requiem mass.  So I feel guilty talking about her career and why I was so attached to her.  She was a remarkable woman, and she'd hate me to say it!

JoAnna Dutka, 1 November 1934, Canmore – 3 January 2023, Canmore

 

Professor Emerita JoAnna Dutka died on 3 January 2023 at 1 pm in Canmore, Alberta. She was an esteemed medievalist and musicologist (BA and MA from University of Alberta; ARCT from the Royal Conservatory of Music, PhD U of Toronto) and much more not so easily labelled. She joined Erindale College (now the Department of English and Drama, UTM) in 1974. Her research focused on Medieval English drama, poetry, and music; children’s literature, especially of the eighteenth century; and Canadian literature and visual art, especially from Western Canada. Her publications range from the scholarly Music in the English Mystery Plays (1980) to Kathleen Daly: Canmore Workings (1987) and Sacred Heart Church: A Centennial Celebration (1993). She had been editing the Records of Early English Drama (REED) volume on Norwich to 1540 at the time of her death. In her trips back and forth between Canmore and Toronto, she was always accompanied by boxes and boxes of material on which she tried to work for some part of each day, despite the mountains calling her name. The spread of research findings was literally awesome. Her final conversation with REED about the ongoing work consisted of a detailed update, a couple of weeks before her death, with Sally-Beth MacLean, who made her feel secure about the future of a project JoAnna knew she could not finish.

 

JoAnna loved to teach, and was recognized with the prestigious OCUFA Teaching Award. Her extensive administrative service to the University included the positions of Associate Director, PhD; Acting Director of the Graduate Department of English; and Associate Chair of English for Erindale College. After retirement, she continued to teach undergraduates part-time, at Trinity College, where she became a Fellow and member of the Board of Trustees. She also taught Continuing Studies courses on various topics, her favourite being Nordic Sagas, a topic her mostly adult students begged for. She also served on the Board of the Osborne Collection of Early Children’s Books, Toronto Public Library.

 

I will miss JoAnna hugely, as I’m sure will all her many friends, colleagues, and students. We all have many diverse memories of her. As the former editor of the REED Newsletter, she taught me how to edit a journal, when I took over as editor, for which the success of Early Theatre, now a McMaster journal (1998-continuing), is a tribute to her wisdom. We attended many concerts together (Tafelmusik, Toronto Consort, and rare appearances of Les Arts florissants, Jordi Savall, or other early musicians), and she went to many more by herself, especially quartets, and modern Canadian concerts, whose members were often personal friends as well. Former students kept in touch, always the sign of a warmly discerning teacher who nurtured the individual’s skills.

 

When I hiked with her in the Rockies, I was stunned by her knowledge of the mountains as though they too were personal friends. She knew their names and the creatures who lived there. We watched a coyote hunt some small creature in high grass, and a wolf family with several cubs navigate the ditches beside the highway to Banff. We watched elk watching us. Most surprisingly, kemosabe-like, she explained to me that gouges on our path in a high plateau meant a grizzly had been by perhaps 2 or 3 days ago. An event that could only happen to JoAnna: we went on a ramble to the Bow River source, and on the way back saw a Canadian artist painting by the river while his young son played. We knew him (Ron Zeer) from Toronto art shows, and stopped to chat. He showed us one of his huge paintings in the hotel nearby. Amazingly, JoAnna seemed always to know everyone, everywhere, and everyone seemed to be her friend, whether at a lecture in the university setting, a concert, a party (very occasional – she didn’t like parties), even sometimes a play, or just dinner somewhere new. Discussion topics never seemed to run out, nor did our laughter. I know I’m not alone when I say that her death means I will no longer have a confidante and comrade to share the wryly amusing experience of life in quite the same way.

Her funeral was held on Thursday, January 19^th, in Canmore. It will be streamed for the next few weeks at https://virtualmemorialgatherings.com/joannadutka. The funeral was as she wanted it to be. A pianist, a singer, a choir, a requiem mass, with old friends and neighbours in attendance. It was austere, lovely to hear, and very simple – expressing JoAnna’s devout wishes.

 

Rest in peace.

 

Helen Ostovich

 

Dr H M Ostovich
<[log in to unmask]>
Founding Editor, Early Theatre
Professor Emeritus, English & Cultural Studies
McMaster University
Hamilton ON L8S 4L9 
Canada