Sandra Djwa learned she had been appointed to the Order of Canada last month, along with two other West Vancouver residents. The honour is given to Canadian individuals who make extraordinary contributions to the country.
“I was delighted,” said Djwa, on learning of her appointment. “It’s given for a lifetime’s work and I was an early pioneer in the teaching of Canadian literature.”
Djwa is a professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University, where she taught for almost 40 years. She chaired the university’s English department from 1986 to ’94.
Among her various accomplishments, she has authored 10 books and written countless scholarly articles and pieces of criticism related to Canadian literature. She also helped co-found the first academic association of Canadian literature in the country.
While getting her PhD from the University of British Columbia in the late ’60s, she interviewed Leonard Cohen for the The Ubyssey school newspaper, a story which was later picked up by other publishers and is still in production today.
Through her work as a teacher and critic, she has written about and exposed young minds to the literary canons of everyone from Margaret Laurence to Alice Munro and beyond.
But it was her work as a biographer that landed her the most nationwide attention over the years, which included a trio of works based on the lives of Canadian poets F.R. Scott, Roy Daniells and P.K. Page.
For the biography on Page, Djwa was given the Governor General’s Award for non-fiction in 2013.
“She was one of our major poets, if not our major poet. It was really about a young women, from a good family, who decided she wanted to write, which in those days was considered not-quite-nice for a young woman,” mused Djwa.
While Djwa said the world had changed and books were often given less attention in our multimedia-frenzied society, the written word was still vital, she said. She is currently working on a non-fiction book that blends a memoir of her own personal history with Canadian literature as well as literary history.
While an Order of Canada investiture ceremony with Gov. Gen. Julie Payette would have normally been scheduled for around this time, the event has been postponed indefinitely due to COVID-19.
