New Book Celebrates StFX Professor and Poet RJ MacSween

R. J. (Roderick Joseph) MacSween was the kind of English professor and critically acclaimed author who engaged his students and inspired the careers of countless Xaverians, including literary icons Alistair MacLeod and Sheldon Currie.

Now, a StFX alumnus whose career was influenced by MacSween has paid homage to him in a new biography - Forgotten World: The Life of R.J. MacSween (CBU Press).

For Dr. Stewart Donovan, who is also a former StFX English professor now working at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, writing the biography seemed like the most appropriate way to share the legacy of his literary role model, who passed away in 1990 at age 75.

On Saturday, Donovan launched a local book promotional tour at StFX, and says he enjoys getting out and meeting people who remember MacSween as a true artist, and one of the country’s finest poets.

“I place him with Northrop Frye, Marshall McLuhan and Louis Dudek, who have championed his poetry and called him Canada’s great unknown poet,” he said.

Donovan chronicles MacSween’s early life growing up in Bras d’Or Lake in Cape Breton, his days as a Roman Catholic priest, and his work as an English professor at StFX from 1948 to 1980.

During that period, MacSween published many poems and short stories. In 1970 he created  a showcase for all local authors as founder of The Antigonish Review – a quarterly journal that has gone on to become one of Canada’s best-known vehicles for up-and-coming literary talent.

But it was MacSween’s effort to establish a creative writing course at StFX in 1963 that would truly make him an unsung hero of Canadian literature, as StFX became the only university in the country to offer such a class, Donovan said. 

As he sees it, people may never know the full extent of its impact on students, but for him, it would help chart the course of his career.

“I regard him as one of Canada’s greatest intellectuals, and I believe that he will one day be more widely recognized as such,” said Donovan, adding that he experienced a full-circle moment in 1983, when he completed his PhD and returned to the creative writing class at StFX as professor.

“I was asked to fill his shoes, so to speak, after my doctorate in Ireland, and I was the last person in the StFX English Department to teach that creative writing course,” he said.

A variation of the original course still exists at StFX, which means new generations of students are still reaping the benefits of MacSween’s dedication to developing Canadian literature.

He would no doubt be pleased.

In an interview that appeared in The Antigonish Review in 1980, MacSween said that instilling a love of writing had been the most satisfying aspect of his career.

“I try to make (students) see the joy of it all - that there is a pleasure in doing a poem, but not pleasure that gives a laugh; it’s the a kind of passive enjoyment in seeing something well done,” said the priest-professor.

At the same time, he also stressed the historical significance of teaching students to become articulate writers.

“A hundred years later somebody may read (what they wrote) and say, ‘Oh - he was like me!’ The reader looks back and sees this person (and) it’s like a message sent from a hundred years ago, telling us how human we all are.”

Forgotten World: The Life of R.J. MacSween is Donovan’s fourth book.

He will be at the Centre for Heritage and Science (The Lyceum) in Sydney March 8 from 4 - 6 p.m., and St. Thomas University’s  Holy Cross House Conference Room on March 16 from 5 - 7 p.m.

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