2003 Fredericton Encaenia - Ceremony B
Johnston, Wayne
Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.)
Orator: Patterson, Stephen E.
Citation:
ENCAENIA, MAY, 2003
WAYNE JOHNSTON
to be Doctor of Letters
Twenty years ago, Wayne Johnston, a UNB student, was writing his first novel. It became his thesis for the MA in Creative Writing. Today, he is numbered among the top novelists in Canada, a mature writer with six well-received novels to his credit along with a book of non-fiction and numerous published short stories, essays, and poems. To the great satisfaction of UNB's Department of English, he has been showered with accolades and prestigious awards, yet he has never forgotten his roots, either here or in his home province, Newfoundland.
Most of his writing is about Newfoundland and its people. His first novel, which was published as The Life of Bobby O'Malley, is surely at least partly autobiographical. It is about a boy of Irish Catholic ancestry growing up in a small community outside St. John's. He goes to Catholic schools and his mother hopes he will become a priest, but he has other ideas. Wayne Johnston grew up in Goulds not far from St. John's, and he attended St. Kevin's Elementary School and Brother Rice High School before enrolling in the English program at Memorial University of Newfoundland. He graduated with his BA in 1978. Even before coming to UNB he was winning prizes for his writing; and since, every one of his publications has been recognized with significant awards. His early works won the W.H.Smith/Books in Canada Award, the prestigious Canadian Authors Association Award for most promising young writer, and the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize. Two of his novels have been adapted for film, and Johnston has written the screenplays. His fifth novel, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, was short-listed for Canada's top awards for fiction, including the Ciller Prize, the Governor General's Award, the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour, and the Rogers Communication Writers Trust Fiction Prize. It won the Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize and the Canadian Authors Association Award for Fiction. His latest two works have continued the trend: Baltimore's Mansions won the inaugural Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction, while his sixth novel, The Navigator of New York, was short-listed for both the Giller and the Governor General's.
Some people have called his works historical novels, but that does not quite describe Johnston's distinctive genre. He writes about historical figures, like Joey Smallwood, Newfoundland's Father of Confederation, the hero of The Colony of Unrequited Dreams. But this is a highly fictionalized Smallwood, a figure out of Johnston's creative imagination, with inner thoughts and personal secrets which no biographer or historian has ever known. So too with The Navigator of New York, the story of a fictional Newfoundland boy caught up in the dramatic rivalry between Robert Edwin Peary, the famous American Arctic explorer at the turn of the last century, and Dr. Frederick Cook who beat out Peary in the race to be first to reach the North Pole. There was, of course, a Newfoundland connection: Capt. Bob Bartlett of the tiny village of Brigus was Peary's navigator on the famed 1908 expedition and his home attracts tourists to this day. But for Johnston, the historical allusions are little more than framework. His forte is the imaginative recreation of what might have been, a filling in of the gaps invariably left by historical empiricists. As he himself has written, "characters in a book like Colony should be judged in the context of fiction, not according to what degree they conform or seem to conform to their historical counterparts." These are works of art, not science, searching, as he has said, for "emotional truth" rather than for "adherence to an often untrustworthy historical record."
His reviewers say it best. One calls Baltimore's Mansions "a masterpiece of creative non-fiction." The Toronto Star described Colony as "a classic novel which will make a permanent mark on our literature." The Globe and Mail describes Johnston as a "prodigiously talented writer... well on his way to becoming the most distinctive talent this country has produced since Mordecai Richler." This is heady praise for a boy from Newfoundland by way of UNB. Little wonder that this University wishes to join the chorus with a hearty "Well done" to one of our most gifted and accomplished graduates.
From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 4
WAYNE JOHNSTON
to be Doctor of Letters
Twenty years ago, Wayne Johnston, a UNB student, was writing his first novel. It became his thesis for the MA in Creative Writing. Today, he is numbered among the top novelists in Canada, a mature writer with six well-received novels to his credit along with a book of non-fiction and numerous published short stories, essays, and poems. To the great satisfaction of UNB's Department of English, he has been showered with accolades and prestigious awards, yet he has never forgotten his roots, either here or in his home province, Newfoundland.
Most of his writing is about Newfoundland and its people. His first novel, which was published as The Life of Bobby O'Malley, is surely at least partly autobiographical. It is about a boy of Irish Catholic ancestry growing up in a small community outside St. John's. He goes to Catholic schools and his mother hopes he will become a priest, but he has other ideas. Wayne Johnston grew up in Goulds not far from St. John's, and he attended St. Kevin's Elementary School and Brother Rice High School before enrolling in the English program at Memorial University of Newfoundland. He graduated with his BA in 1978. Even before coming to UNB he was winning prizes for his writing; and since, every one of his publications has been recognized with significant awards. His early works won the W.H.Smith/Books in Canada Award, the prestigious Canadian Authors Association Award for most promising young writer, and the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize. Two of his novels have been adapted for film, and Johnston has written the screenplays. His fifth novel, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, was short-listed for Canada's top awards for fiction, including the Ciller Prize, the Governor General's Award, the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour, and the Rogers Communication Writers Trust Fiction Prize. It won the Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize and the Canadian Authors Association Award for Fiction. His latest two works have continued the trend: Baltimore's Mansions won the inaugural Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction, while his sixth novel, The Navigator of New York, was short-listed for both the Giller and the Governor General's.
Some people have called his works historical novels, but that does not quite describe Johnston's distinctive genre. He writes about historical figures, like Joey Smallwood, Newfoundland's Father of Confederation, the hero of The Colony of Unrequited Dreams. But this is a highly fictionalized Smallwood, a figure out of Johnston's creative imagination, with inner thoughts and personal secrets which no biographer or historian has ever known. So too with The Navigator of New York, the story of a fictional Newfoundland boy caught up in the dramatic rivalry between Robert Edwin Peary, the famous American Arctic explorer at the turn of the last century, and Dr. Frederick Cook who beat out Peary in the race to be first to reach the North Pole. There was, of course, a Newfoundland connection: Capt. Bob Bartlett of the tiny village of Brigus was Peary's navigator on the famed 1908 expedition and his home attracts tourists to this day. But for Johnston, the historical allusions are little more than framework. His forte is the imaginative recreation of what might have been, a filling in of the gaps invariably left by historical empiricists. As he himself has written, "characters in a book like Colony should be judged in the context of fiction, not according to what degree they conform or seem to conform to their historical counterparts." These are works of art, not science, searching, as he has said, for "emotional truth" rather than for "adherence to an often untrustworthy historical record."
His reviewers say it best. One calls Baltimore's Mansions "a masterpiece of creative non-fiction." The Toronto Star described Colony as "a classic novel which will make a permanent mark on our literature." The Globe and Mail describes Johnston as a "prodigiously talented writer... well on his way to becoming the most distinctive talent this country has produced since Mordecai Richler." This is heady praise for a boy from Newfoundland by way of UNB. Little wonder that this University wishes to join the chorus with a hearty "Well done" to one of our most gifted and accomplished graduates.
From: Honoris Causa - UA Case 70, Box 4
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