VANCOUVER — Author Stephen Galloway’s former boss at the University of British Columbia has told a defamation trial there were sufficient reasons to recommend firing the writer in 2015, but the spread of information about allegations against him should have been contained.

Former dean of arts Gage Averill, now provost and a vice-president at the university, was called to testify by a former student who accused Galloway of rape, and is now a defendant in the trial.

Galloway says the former student known as A.B. and other defendants defamed him and ruined his reputation by spreading the unproven accusations, which he denies.

A.B., whose name is under a publication ban, is not testifying at the trial and is not defending her allegations against the acclaimed author of novels including “The Cellist of Sarajevo” as true.

The court heard Averill was told of the allegations against Galloway by professor Annabel Lyon in November 2015, and he told her “about the need to contain the spread of information.”

But faculty from the university’s creative writing department had already met about the allegations, a move Averill called “unfortunate.”

“I stressed that this would have to be a confidential matter moving forward. They should be very careful about that,” said Averill, who was the last witness in the trial.

“It struck me that it was unfortunate to have a meeting about something this confidential at the time. It had already happened, so there was nothing I could do about that meeting, but that’s the reason I was stressing confidentiality and the lack of discussing this beyond that group going forward.”

Galloway’s suspension from the university had been publicly announced, mentioning “serious allegations” against him.

Averill was asked by A.B.’s lawyer, Sydney Gomez, whether the university had ever publicly announced a professor’s suspension during his tenure with the university.

“I don’t think so,” he replied.

The court heard that his role as dean included recommending termination of a professor to the university president, before the president decides whether to proceed with terminate, which is then handled by the board of governors.

Galloway was awarded a six-figure sum in an arbitration proceeding with the university over its public announcements of his suspension and subsequent termination.

Gomez asked Averill about Galloway’s termination letter, and if its contents were “sufficient for finding a record of misconduct resulting in an irreparable breach of trust” against the author.

“Yes,” Averill replied.

Justice Neena Sharma had said Friday before Averill’s testimony that it could not refer to “rumours and innuendo” about Galloway as evidence of a “bad reputation.”

Sharma said potentially inadmissible and prejudicial evidence could come out in Averill’s testimony.

Galloway has said the allegations by the ex-student known as A.B. — with whom he had a two-year affair — are false and ended up ruining his writing career.

The court heard that Averill had to be legally compelled by a subpoena to testify.

Gomez told the court that factors that caused the university to publish a statement about Galloway’s suspension were of “fundamental importance” to her defence.

She said her client’s defence involves “intervening acts” by the university that harmed Galloway’s reputation that weren’t probable or foreseeable when A.B. made her allegations.

But Dan Coles, a lawyer for Galloway, said A.B. had “set off a nuclear bomb by way of very public and very false allegations that Mr. Galloway raped her.”

Coles told the court that it was a “natural and probable consequence of allegations of that nature” to spready widely to “all sorts of places.”

“It’s not only natural (and) probable, that is entirely foreseeable,” he said.

Final submissions in the trial are set to begin on Nov. 23.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 13, 2026.