Ira Dilworth
Director of CBC Radio's B.C. broadcasting from 1938 to 1946. He
ultimately became director of the English language CBC network in 1956
Ira Dilworth was, among many things, the most important literary
conduit for Emily Carr's writing. His introduction to her work in Klee Wyck
(1941) reveals the affectionate concern for her as both an artist and a friend.
Few mentors and editors in British Columbia have been so influential on the
career of a particular literary artist. Dilworth corrected Emily Carr's rather
awkward spelling and grammar. He worked directly with her as an editor,
spending three weeks with her on The Book of Small, for instance, and he also
negotiated with her publisher. Dilworth effectively replaced the painter Lawren
Harris as Carr's confidante. Dilworth and Carr were both intensely private
people who were proud to be British Columbians. Despite their 20-year-age
difference--or perhaps because of it--they were able sign their many letters to
one another with 'love'. She confessed some of her most private feelings to him
and sometimes playfully referred to him as 'My Beloved Guardian'. As Kate Braid
has noted in her short but useful biography of Carr, she categorized her
letters to him as N.N.T.A. (Not Necessary To Answer), R.A.L. (Read At Leisure),
Red Hot Specials, Week Enders and Special Deliveries. In turn, she kept a bag
of his letters by her bed to cheer her up.
Born in High Bluff, Manitoba on March 25, 1894, Dilworth grew
up in the Okanagan and Victoria where he taught school from 1915 to 1926,
completing his M.A. at Harvard in the process. As a high school principal in
Victoria from 1926 to 1934, he became a trusted sponsor of Carr's work, later
serving as her literary trustee. Living with his mother on Simcoe Street,
Dilworth was a progressive presence in the city, hosting promising students
that included Walter Gage, Roy Daniells and Jack Shadbolt, often playing them
Schubert on the piano and encouraging them to write poetry. When he moved to
Vancouver to teach English at UBC from 1934 to 1938, he was able to further
promote Carr's career, gaining influence as director of CBC Radio's B.C.
broadcasting from 1938 to 1946. He ultimately became director of the English
language CBC network in 1956. Dilworth had studied at Harvard under George
Lyman Kittredge and his own protegé Roy Daniells became head of the UBC English
department. Ira Dilworth founded the CBC Vancouver Orchestra in 1938--still
going strong more than 60 years later--and in 1945 he also became the first
president of the Vancouver Community Arts Council, the first organization of
its kind in North America. Dilworth died on November 23, 1962 in Vancouver.
***
IRA DILWORTH
The death occurred on November 23rd, 1962, at the age of 68,
of Ira Dilworth, formerly a Professor of English in this University, a
distinguished alumnus, and for three years a member of the Senate. It is an
occasion when we can pay tribute, many of us in the light of warmly personal
memories, to a man of steadily widening influence. For he not only began his
career as a teacher, he was in a sense a dedicated teacher all his life. The
values and enthusiasms he directly communicated to those who knew or heard him
became in turn a leaven in the lives of a larger community and of fresh
generations.
From 1915 to 1934 Ira Dilworth taught English at Victoria
High School where his powers as a teacher were matched by administrative
talents that made him principal in 1926. He also was twice elected President of
the B.C. Teachers' Federation. The inspirational quality of his teaching,
widely acclaimed, never meant a sacrifice of care for detail and for a high
standard of work. His direction of the annual Shakespeare production and his
share in the morning assembly brought dramatics and music into the life of the
school; his friendly interest in pupils and former pupils, many of whom he
invited into his home, opened for them cultural horizons that were new and
exciting. Because these talents and interests inevitable took him into the life
of the community, the cultural growth of Victoria owed much to his vitality and
unselfish zeal.
As Associate Professor of English at the University of
British Columbia from 1934 to 1938, he attracted large numbers of students to
his lectures on the poetry of the Romantic Movement. Here his infectious
enthusiasm and sensitive interpretations extended his influence through the
maturer level of those who were themselves to become teachers. From 1938 to
1940 he was also the director of the Bach Choir.
The blend of aesthetic interests and administrative gifts
soon carried him on to a larger sphere of activity as regional director of the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, a post he held from 1938 to 1947. He also
helped to organize the Vancouver Community Arts Council, and in 1945 became its
first president. By his move to Montreal he enlarged further the scope of his
work and influence, becoming general manager of the International Service of
the C.B.C. in 1947, director of programme production for Toronto in 1951,
director for Ontario in 1953, and director of all C.B.C. English networks in
1956. Through these years until his retirement and even afterwards, his
distinctive qualities and energies were employed in fostering the cultural life
of all his fellow-Canadians, especially by developing the creative powers of
younger people, whom it was his delight to know and assist.
Although this outline of a career can establish the facts of
a steadily increasing influence, it can do little to suggest the grateful
memories of a personality at once gay and serious, warm and sensitive. Ira
Dilworth knew the diligent and exacting labours of an editor, in his texts for
high school use, in his own college anthology of twentiethcentury verse, and in
his preparing of Emily Carr's prose for the press. Yet he was not one of those
scholars whose intensive exploring of a specialized field results in a number
of books and articles; he was rather one whose humanistic passion for
literature and the arts took the form of an urge to communicate, and whose
knowledge and insights were employed in stimulating and encouraging others. His
untiring efforts to hasten recognition of Emily Carr as a writer are on record
in her own affectionate words; his many-sided contributions to Canadian
cultural awareness are a matter of public acknowledgment. This pleased him, but
he would be just as pleased to have us record, in the words of one of his
favourite poets, "that best portion of a good man's life,/ His little, nameless
unremembered acts,/ Of kindness and of love."
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