Acclaimed writer and editor Kildare Dobbs dies at age 89 in Toronto

TORONTO – Acclaimed Toronto writer and editor Kildare Dobbs, who co-founded the Canadian magazine Tamarack Review and won a Governor General’s Literary Award, has died.

His wife of 33 years, photographer and artist Linda Kooluris Dobbs, says he died Monday morning of kidney and congestive heart failure at Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital.

Dobbs was 89.

“He was a man of great heart and generosity and I knew his writing before I knew him,” Kooluris Dobbs said in a telephone interview Monday.

“He was very loved by many, in many different areas of his life. … He was so timeless.”

Born in Meerut, India, Dobbs was educated in Dublin, Cambridge and London. He also served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War.

In 1952, he immigrated to Canada and was an early contributor to the CBC Radio programs “Anthology” and “Ideas.”

Dobbs also worked as a senior editor at publishing house Macmillan Canada, co-founded the Tamarack Review, and wrote for publications including Saturday Night, where he also served as managing editor.

In 1962, his autobiography “Running to Paradise” won a Governor General’s Literary Award.

Dobbs — whose other honours included the Order of Ontario and the Order of Canada — also published various collections of short stories, novellas and poetry, and was a renowned travel writer.

“He came alive when he was travelling and he brought that vision back to Canada and people wanted to travel because of what he wrote,” said Kooluris Dobbs, who was his third wife.

Dobbs’ ailing health in recent years meant in couldn’t travel, though, which Kooluris Dobbs called “a great tragedy.”

“I think the other side of him is … he did a lot of things quietly. He was a person who couldn’t brag about himself,” she said, noting that worked against him as an author in recent years because he didn’t promote himself enough.

“His work was the doing of the writing and producing great beauty through that, so he was from another generation altogether. And as a life partner he was just a wonderful person to share a life with. We both worked at home, we travelled well together, we shared family that we enjoy, we shared friends.

“He told my mother, when he married me, that he had to marry three times to get the right mother-in-law. So that sense of humour was always intact. … I envied his wit.”

Dobbs is also survived by his four children — John Dobbs, Christian Dobbs, Lucinda Favell, and Sarah Dobbs — as well as many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.