Kildare Dobbs: an accomplished and resourceful writerBorn: October 10th,
1923. Died: April 1st, 2013.
Kildare Dobbs: committed much of his abundant life to the written word and
was the most genial of companions.
Sat, May 11, 2013, 06:00
First published:Sat, May 11, 2013, 06:00
Seamus Heaney
once
said that nobody had done more to welcome and assist Irish writers in
Canada than Kildare Dobbs, who made his own livelihood as a writer – of
narrative non-fiction, books of travel, poetry, and journalism – wholly in
Canada.
He was born in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India, where his father was acting
commissioner, but the family settled back in Ireland in a Victorian mansion
between Castlecomer and Gowran, Co Kilkenny; Dobbs’s maternal grandfather,
John Henry Bernard, was the Protestant archbishop of Dublin and, at Lloyd
George’s urging, became provost of Trinity College
Dublin
in
1919.
Educated at St Columba’s – the poet Richard
Murphy
and Michael Yeats
were
fellow students and friends – he saw no future for himself in Ireland and
so enlisted in the Royal Navy during the second World War, escorting and
protecting convoys and merchant ships in the Atlantic. Twice he came close
to death: once, his vessel almost collided with a troop ship, and on
another voyage a vicious hurricane nearly capsized his ship.
Tanganyika
During the decade of his first marriage, to Patricia Parsons, two sons were
born, he attended Jesus College, Cambridge, and in 1948 the family decamped
to east Africa, where Dobbs was posted as a district officer and magistrate
in Tanganyika. The place seized his imagination and entered his dreams. At
one point he intrepidly tracked man-eating lions.
Later he was falsely and maliciously accused of stealing an elephant’s
ivory tusks and was sentenced to a minimum-security prison, with hard
labour. The sentence was later quashed, but by then he had spent four
months in jail.
He returned to Ireland, but, still restless, in 1952 decided to emigrate to
Canada, sailing steerage from Cobh. Throughout his long life, he always
felt the tug of the Ireland he had lost. After a desultory period teaching
in high school, he joined
Macmillan
publishers
as an editor and worked there for eight years, nurturing an academy of
writers and forming close friendships with Brian
Moore
(`a
complete master’), Mordecai
Richler
and
Marshall McLuhan. Dobbs was an alert and resourceful publisher.
It was in Canada that his marriage ended in divorce, but he was given
custody of his sons. His second marriage was to Mary McAlpine, a Vancouver
journalist, and the couple and their two daughters spent time in Spain in
1964 and five years later lived in Morocco.
Other journeys – to France, Mexico (a beloved destination) and back to
Ireland – aroused in him a wish to write travel essays, which became his
favourite and most accomplished genre.
An elegant stylist, Dobbs’s first book, Running to Paradise (1962), won a
Governor General’s Award in Canada. He was adept at various verse-forms and
published three collections of poetry: The Eleventh Hour (1997), Casablanca:
The Poem (1999), and, at the age of 87, Casanova in Venice: A Raunchy
Rhyme (2010), based loosely on Giacomo Casanova’s Memoir s .
In 1970 Dobbs collaborated with the well-known cartoonist Ronald
Searle
on The Great Fur Opera , a satirical history of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
Early in that decade he helped to formulate Canada’s major multiculturalism
initiative, writing policy papers and speeches for the Trudeau
administration.
Discerning chronicler
A discerning chronicler, his other books include Anatolian Suite (1989),
a travel volume that also tells the story of the Armenian genocide; a work
of fiction, The Pride and Fall(1981), inspired by his African
experiences; and a sparkling memoir, Running the Rapids (2005). In this
last he wrote: `Writing memoirs is like looking at a beach where the tides
have thrown up litter, kelp, seashells.’
He also wrote an insightful introductory essay to accompany the photographs
of his third wife, Linda Kooluris Dobbs, in The Gardens of The Vatican
(2009).
Among his other signal accomplishments were adaptations for radio of
Dubliners andFinnegans Wake , and a year as writer in residence at the
University of Toronto in 2002.
As a journalist, the soft-spoken Dobbs delighted in raising issues. He
committed much of his abundant life to the written word and was the most
genial of companions, all the more convivial with a glass of gin at his
elbow.
Kildare Dobbs died of kidney and congestive heart failure in Toronto. The
date of his demise would have prompted a memorable witticism. His ashes
were to be brought home to Co Kilkenny.
He is survived by his wife Linda, sons John and Christian, daughters
Lucinda and Sarah, and sister Sally Gibbs.