Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Read, Stanley
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1900-1997
History
Stanley E. Read was born on February 7, 1900, in Rock Island, Quebec. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1923 and a Master of Arts in 1925 from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. After going to France on a scholarship from 1925 to 1927 and temporary employment at Bishop's College in St. John's, Newfoundland, Read moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1928 to work as an English Professor at DePaul University. While in Chicago, he met his wife, Ruth Read, whom he married in 1940. In 1946, Read moved to Vancouver and joined the Department of English at the University of British Columbia. He continued to teach in the department until his retirement in 1971. Read passed away in Vancouver on April 8, 1997, at the age of 97.
Read's lasting contributions to the University of British Columbia are numerous. In 1953, Read was one of the eight UBC professors. Along with writer Roderick Haig-Brown, they started a foundation at UBC with a small sum of money accumulated from various bets and fines for illegal or non-ethical fishing methods during a group fishing holiday at Upper Campbell Lake. The foundation, playfully called The Harry Hawthorn Foundation for the Inculcation and Propagation of the Principles and Ethics of Fly-Fishing, used its proceeds to purchase books on angling and game fishing for the UBC Library over time; produced what is now known as the "Harry Hawthorn Foundation Collection." For 34 years, Read was the Secretary of the foundation and organized their annual fishing trips. Read was also instrumental in the organization of UBC's International House and played a formative role in the founding of Canadian Literature: A Quarterly of Criticism and Review.
Read wrote several articles, books, bibliographies, and book reviews about his academic interests and fishing hobby. Publications by Read include A Bibliography of Hogarth Books and Studies, 1900-1940 (DePaul University, 1941); Documents of Eighteenth-Century Taste (DePaul University, 1942); What Manner of Man Was He? Andrew Carnegie and Libraries in British Columbia (University of British Columbia, 1960); More Recreation for the Contemplative Man: A Supplemental Bibliography of Books on Angling and Game Fish in the University of British Columbia (compiled with Laurenda Daniells, 1971); and A Place Called Pennask: A Capsule History of the Pennask Lake Company Limited and the Pennask Lake Fishing and Game Club (Mitchell Press, 1977).
Read was also a hobbyist photographer and took many photos during his fishing trips and vacations with Ruth's wife. His photographs were featured in British Columbia: A Centennial Anthology (McLelland and Stewart, 1958). One of his photographs was used for the book's cover A Small and Charming World (Creekstone Press, 2001).