Eric MCCORMACK

ERIC PATRICK MCCORMACK Author, critic and longtime professor of English at St. Jerome's College, University of Waterloo, passed away at age 84 after a brief illness on 9 May 2023 at Kingston General Hospital. An academic emigrant from Bellshill, Scotland, he arrived at the University of Manitoba in August 1966 to earn a doctorate analysing a work that influenced his writings and teaching for the rest of his life: Robert Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy." There he formed the first of many deeply intertwined personal and professional relationships that would last through his career. In 1970, he and his young family moved to Waterloo, Ontario, where he would spend the rest of the millennium as a popular and entertaining lecturer and occasional department chair, known as much for his gently mocking humour and soft touch in marking undergraduate work as for his many contributions to a variety of literary journals as writer and editor. A wider public was introduced to his work with the publication of "Inspecting the Vaults," a collection of his short stories, in 1987 and, two years later, his debut novel "The Paradise Motel." Both won prizes in Canada and abroad, while the novel was on more than one judge's longlist for that year's Booker Prize. His uniquely disturbing prose style, full of dread, coincidence and searches for resolution, remains popular with readers of literary horror, as were his subsequent four novels and occasional book reviews. As an editor and tastemaker, he did much to create a wider audience in Canada and abroad for his two lifelong interests, Commonwealth fiction and magical realism. He remarried in his fifties and built a new life for himself, his wife, Nancy, and their many cats in Kingston, Ontario. He spent his long post-retirement indulging in his favourite pastimes: writing, travel, golf and dining with his broad circle of friends and loved ones. He is survived by his children, Michael (Elspeth) and Jody Evely (Derek), his grandchildren, Oscar, Polly and Mastewal Evely, and his brother, John. He also left behind a Canada-wide legion of former students, whose lives, accomplishments and happiness were as dear to him as his own. At his request, no funeral service or memorial is planned. Rather, a gathering in his memory will be held later this summer. Expressions of sympathy can be made to the Kingston Humane Society. Sharing of memories is available at www.GFTompkins-Township.ca