In Memoriam - Michael Brian

Former colleagues and many hundreds of students mourn the passing of Michael Brian on Jan. 17 after a long illness.

His affability, fairness, trust and respect for everyone made him an ideal choice to be the first chair of our merged Loyola and Sir George Williams English departments in the early 1970s.

These same qualities led to his election as the first president of the newly unionized Concordia University Faculty Association, a position to which he was subsequently elected for a second term. He later served on the university Board of Governors. In his many incarnations over nearly 40 years, Michael was always a master party-thrower, a generous, indeed extravagant, host.

But it is as a great teacher that he will be best remembered. In the 1960s he bounded across the TV screen at an ungodly Saturday morning hour, lecturing on assorted great literary works as part of the University of the Air; as a performer-teacher Michael had no peer.

Only Michael could manage to teach Macbeth for an entire term from an alchemical perspective. But it was his classes on Ulysses that were legendary. His etymological bent, knowledge of the arcane, and verbal wit were destined to encounter the uberetymologist, arcanist, and wordsmith James Joyce, with exciting, if sometimes fantastic, results.

A member of the International James Joyce Society, he travelled to such places as Dublin, St. Petersburg and Italy lecturing on the subterranean Dantean structure of Joyce’s Dubliners and the scatologically blasphemous structures of Molly Bloom herself in a way that would have delighted Joyce. I like to imagine them seated together on a cloud exchanging puns and hoisting a glass.

In the words of his beloved daughters, raise a glass for Mike.

Katherine Waters, (English, retired)

Editor: Born in England, where he attended Oxford University, Michael Brian was a professor at the university for 38 years. He was predeceased last May by his wife of 40 years, Mary, a mathematics professor at Concordia.

A memorial service will be held Jan. 26, at 3 p.m. at the Mount Royal Funeral Complex, 1297 Chemin de la Forêt, Outremont, (514) 279-6540, followed by an Irish wake at the family home.

Our sympathies are extended to the Brian family.