Thomas Joseph HENIGHAN

October 15, 1934 – December 1, 2025 With deep sadness, we announce the death of Thomas Joseph (Tom) Henighan at the age of 91, as the result of injuries sustained in a fall at his home. Predeceased by his sister Margaret Henighan, he is survived by his wife Marilyn Carson Henighan, children Stephen Henighan (Ana Lorena Leija), Phoebe Henighan and Michael Henighan (Serena Chin), and grandchildren Julian, Leonora and Evelyn, as well as by his sisters Helen Henighan-Dobbins, Mary Jo Fazzari and Patricia Henighan. Tom was born in Manhattan to Thomas A. Henighan and Helen Henighan, née Smith. His parents, both of Irish ancestry, immigrated from opposite coasts of Scotland and met in New York City. The eldest of five children in a family that sometimes struggled to get by during the Great Depression and the Second World War, Tom found escape and imaginative stimulation in English and European literature, classical music, radio serials, films and comic books. He had a difficult relationship with his father, who discouraged him from attending university. Tom was fortunate to win a full scholarship to St. John's University in Queens, New York, where he majored in History. He started graduate work at Columbia University but was forced to withdraw for lack of funds. He took the United States Foreign Service Exam and was accepted into the diplomatic service. After training in Washington, D.C., he served as a U.S. diplomat in Aden --then a British colony, today part of Yemen-- and in Hamburg, Germany. In the former posting, he met his first wife, Diana Collett (later Diana MacDonald), who was from England. Though Tom was adept at the intellectual discipline required by foreign service work, his spontaneous, outspoken personality was not well suited to the restrained niceties of international diplomacy. In 1961 he left the foreign service and moved with his wife and son to the north of England, where he would eventually earn two advanced degrees in English literature: an M.Litt. from the University of Durham and a Ph.D. from the University of Newcastle. His first teaching job, at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant, where his daughter was born, frustrated him. In 1965, he moved to Carleton University in Ottawa, where he would teach English literature and occasionally journalism and film studies –drawing on his own voluminous movie collection-- until his retirement in 2000. An exuberant and original teacher, Tom specialized in Romanticism, nature writing and late 19th and early 20th century English literature, earning enthusiastic followers among his students, some of whom became lifelong friends. He was one of the pioneers of the teaching of science fiction as a serious academic discipline in Canada. In the 1970s he became one of the first professors to have his lectures filmed and broadcast on cable television. His charismatic personality flourished on the screen; for years afterwards, people in Ottawa would recognize him as "the TV professor." In 1978, with Michael Gnarowski and Christopher Levenson, he became a founding editor of the Ottawa poetry magazine Arc, which continues to publish today. He was also a founder of, and feature writer for, Ottawa Revue, one of the arts tabloids that became popular in Canadian cities at this time. In addition, Tom advised Marion Dewar on arts policy during her years as Mayor of Ottawa (1978-85). In 1969, after his divorce from Diana Collett, Tom married Marilyn Carson. Their son was born in 1979. The family moved from the Glebe to a farm in southeastern Ontario, then to Westboro, where they bought an old redbrick house with hardwood floors, steep staircases and a secluded backyard. From the 1980s to the 2010s, while continuing to teach, Tom focused on his writing. He would eventually publish more than 20 books that ranged over an extensive array of styles and topics. Among his most notable works are the fantasy novel The Well of Time (1988), which was shortlisted for the Seal First Novel Award, and the public-policy polemic The Presumption of Culture: Structure, Strategy and Survival in the Canadian Cultural Landscape (1996), which was widely taught in university Canadian Studies courses in Canada and abroad. His novels for young adults were finalists for prizes such as the Red Maple Award and the Ottawa Book Award for Fiction. His private eye novel Nightshade (2010) was a finalist for the 2011 Shamus Awards. In 2008 Tom was awarded the Victor Tolgesy Prize for his lifetime contribution to the arts in Ottawa. He devoted his retirement to enjoying the second-floor balcony that overlooked his backyard, and spending summer days at his cottage at Hawk Lake, not far from Buckingham, Quebec. He and Marilyn loved receiving visits from their many friends. Tom listened to the classical music that nourished him and to which he responded with acute sensitivity. He collected his short stories into three volumes to be published by Stone Flower Press, a cooperative publisher that he had founded with friends. He campaigned for the preservation of the Westboro neighbourhood's traditional architecture by mounting a vigorous opposition to the Loblaws superstore project on Richmond Road. In the last decade of his life, confronting serious injuries from a succession of falls, as well as metastatic bone cancer, Tom consistently defied the predictions of doctors who told him that he had only months to live or that he would never walk again. Surrounded by friends and family, he continued walking, reading, watching old movies, listening to classical music and planning creative projects until the day of his final fall. Friends are invited to celebrate Tom's life by attending a Memorial Service at the West Chapel of Hulse, Playfair & McGarry, 150 Woodroffe Avenue, (at Byron Avenue), Ottawa, on Saturday, December 20, 2025, beginning at 1:00p.m. A reception will follow in the West Chapel Lounge. Condolences/Donations/Tributes Hulse, Playfair & McGarry Www.hpmcgarry.ca 613-728-1761