WRITER FORGED PATH LEADING TO CANADA’S LITERARY VOICE
George Woodcock ranks among Canada’s most prodigious and profound public intellectuals, perhaps the first from British Columbia with a global influence upon the world of ideas.
He moved Canadian literature from colonial marginalia to the centre of public discourse, paving the way for writers like Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood, Irving Layton, Sheila Watson, Timothy Findley and Earle Birney to provide the wider world with a genuine Canadian voice.
He was born in Winnipeg on May 8, 1912, to Arthur Woodcock, who came to Canada in 1907 with hopes of a writing life but became a clerk with the Canadian Northern Railway, and Margaret Gertrude Lewis.
A year later, he returned to England with his parents.
His father died in 1926, but not before instilling in George a sense of longing for his own homeland.
On leaving school in 1928, Woodcock became a railway clerk. In London, he was caught up in the literary ferment of the 1930s, came into contact with essayist George Orwell, poets Stephen Spender, W.H. Auden and Dylan Thomas. During this period he developed his thoughts around the ideas of socialism, anarchism, dissidence and resistance.
During the Second World War he was a pacifist and conscientious objector and did farm labour.
In 1949, he immigrated to Canada with his partner.
They tried subsistence farming near Sooke on Vancouver Island’s west coast.
When that failed, the couple moved to Vancouver and a teaching post at the University of B.C., where he founded Canadian Literature in 1959.
The journal endured for 17 years and had a powerful influence on Canadian writers, generating what some characterize as a paradigm shift regarding the acceptability of Canadians writing about Canada with unrepentantly Canadian themes and motifs.
He also became a prolific writer. He wrote about anarchism; a biography of George Orwell that won a Governor General’s prize; about First Nations art and culture; about Doukhobors; about eccentric provincial premier Amor De Cosmos; about B.C.’s social history.
In all, he produced about 140 books.
He practised what he preached. After his death on Jan. 28, 1995, proceeds from his estate provided endowments to support writers. Book royalties went to support charities and international aid for refugees.
In 2007, British Columbia’s major award for an outstanding literary career was renamed the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award.
He refused membership in the Order of Canada, but accepted the Freedom of the City of Vancouver in 1994.