Larry who quit his job to write poetry

Larry was already teaching in the university department I started in as an archivist in 1979. He died this morning.

Larry loved his students and especially the ones who, like him, spent their early lives in small Newfoundland outports. One of his favourite teaching texts was Paulo Freire’s book “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” and he took the cultural oppression he felt here seriously.

He also had a great sense of humour, and loved to laugh – with others when possible, and at others when necessary. Despite the laughs, I don’t think he liked working in the university very much and in, I think, the mid-1990s he took an early retirement.

He used to say he retired to write poetry. And he did. Lovely, vivid poems about Newfoundland, which he loved so much.

After his retirement, I’d see him from time to time outside the university, but almost never on campus. I was therefore very surprised one day in 2011 when he came on campus for some reason, and he dropped into my office for a few minutes to say hello and to gossip a little. I had one of my old cameras handy and loaded with expired film, so I took a picture of him. It wasn’t the last picture I took of him – I have a later one from a few years later when I saw him in the street. And I had taken a few at departmental functions before then. But it’s the best picture I took of him.


(Pentax PC35AF, with ten-years-expired Fuji 400 colour film. Awful colour, but not bad as b&w.)