Sydney Wayne Jackman

SYDNEY WAYNE JACKMAN

This obituary first appeared in the Globe and Mail on Saturday March 12, 2011.

Sydney Wayne Jackman [ known as 'Toby' after his childhood teddy bear] passed peacefully in his sleep in the early hours of 27th. February. He was born in Fullerton, Orange County, California in 1925, the son of Ensleigh Jackman, an officer in the American navy and his Canadian wife, Dorothy Anfield of Victoria. Both having died soon afterwards, he was brought up in Victoria by his maternal grandparents who had emigrated from England in the early years of the century. After Victoria High School, Toby took a degree in Physics at the University of Washington in Seattle. From physics in Seattle he proceeded to history at Harvard where he completed his Ph.D.[one of the earliest there in Canadian studies] in 1953, on the career of Sir Francis Bond Head, governor of Upper Canada during the Upper Canada rebellion of 1838. He continued at Harvard as a Junior Teaching Fellow before moving to Bates College, Maine. It was during this early period that he began to form an international circle of friends. These not only embraced his own generation, notable among them Paul Mellon, heir to the Pittsburgh steel fortune and John Julius Norwich, the English art historian and travel writer, but also those of younger years whom he met as a visiting fellow of Clare College Cambridge in the sixties. Several of these were to go on to prominent careers in law, medicine,business and scholarship.

Toby kept up his association with the descendants of Sir Francis Bond Head at Inverailort castle in Argyllshire where he was a regular summer guest until his later years. He returned permanently to Canada in 1963 as professor of history in the newly established University of Victoria. Though he seldom exercised it directly, Toby had a shrewd grasp of the realities of executive authority and administrative process. Coupled with an equally penetrating judgment of character this enabled him to serve the university in many vital ways, especially during the turbulence of its early decades. Besides his enduring commitment as a teacher his other consuming engagements were with the Macpherson Library and with the university's art collections. An expert and discerning collector himself, notably of Chinese blue porcelain and of British sporting art, he served continuously for over forty years on the Maltwood Art Museum and Gallery's various governance boards and committees. His service was recognized in the Honorary Doctorate of Letters which the University bestowed on him in 1991. For his part in its foundation he was similarly honoured by the University of Lethbridge.

Toby's diversity as a thinker is apparent in the prolific range of his books and editions; sixteen in all. There are studies of Hanoverian politics and of eminent Victorians; there are accounts of the Dutch Royal family in the 19th century, of the premiers of BC, of women who have spoken out against prevailing orthodoxies in the Christian tradition, not to mention histories of Vancouver Island and Tasmania. Toby had a great appetite for travel. After his retirement he made many unusual sea journeys [through the Panama Canal to Scandinavia, for instance, or from South Africa to England via St. Helena and Ascension]. These were interspersed with time at St. Edmund's College, Cambridge, where he had regular visitor status. After a serious fall in 2008, he passed his last years in the kindness of Hart House on Fairfield Rd. entertaining a diverse sequence of visitors who satisfied his need for conversation. In between times, he continued to devour the English Weekly Telegraph and The Economist. Right to the end he remained alert. A funeral service will be held in Christ Church Cathedral, 930 Burdett Avenue, Victoria, BC, on Monday March 14th at 2:00 pm. A reception will follow in the Church Hall. In lieu of flowers, please make donations to the Victoria Hospice.