BOGAARDS, DR. WINNIFRED MARY - Winnifred Mary Bogaards, esteemed professor of English and promoter of Canadian literature, died suddenly at her home in Rothesay on 28 June 2011. The only child of John (Jack) and Mary (Minnie) McCallum Fergusson, she was predeceased by her former husband, Jan J. W. Bogaards of Ottawa and is survived by her sister-in-law, Ineke Buma, of Oegstgeest in the Netherlands, and Ineke's children, all in the Netherlands: Wybren Jan Buma, his wife, Roberta Buma-Bursi, and their daughter, Alessandra, of Den Bosch; Meike Skafidas-Buma, her husband, Stavros Skafidas, and their children, Eleni and Stefano, of Leiden; Jan Willem Buma of Amsterdam and Wietse Buma of Leiden. Born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan on 29 July 1938, Dr. Bogaards grew up in Sutherland. Her concern for community was evident early on in her involvement with Girl Guides and participation in a Pilgrimage for Youth at the UN in New York. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Queen's University (1960) and immediately began work on her Master of Arts (1963) while teaching at Queen Elizabeth Collegiate in Kingston. She completed her Ph. D. at the University of Saskatchewan in 1969 and taught there, and at the University of Alberta, before joining the faculty of the newly established Saint John Campus of the University of New Brunswick in 1971; she remained at UNB Saint John, serving as chair of the Division of Humanities and Languages (1978-1981), Campus Orator (1981-1983) and chair or member of numerous university committees, until her retirement in 1998 as Professor of English.
Though she wrote many reviews and published and delivered numerous papers on Canadian and British writers, her great passion was the work of Evelyn Waugh, the subject of her Ph. D. dissertation. She was a frequent contributor to and sometime editor of the Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and made many visits to England doing archival research and taping interviews with Waugh's family and acquaintances; in 1986, together with Robert Murray Davis, Paul A. Doyle, Donat Gallagher and Charles E. Linck, she published A Bibliography of Evelyn Waugh. Dr. Bogaards' dedication to scholarship was matched by her passion for teaching. A meticulously organized and dynamic professor, she was popular as a supervisor of theses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. And in 1991-1992, she offered a graduate level course on Waugh and his times.
She leaves behind her a long line of former students currently distinguishing themselves in such fields as politics, education, journalism and publishing. But Dr. Bogaards' contributions to university life went beyond the library and the lecture hall: she was active in the cultural life of the campus, as well, serving on the Visiting Lecturers Committee and, in 1983, chairing the Readings Committee of the Lorenzo Society, a committee with which which she remained active until her retirement. She also served as coordinator of the Atlantic Universities Reading Circuit 1985-1987. In 1996, she organized one of the first international conferences to be held at UNB Saint John, the 6th International Literature of Region & Nation Conference, a triumph for the campus.
Dr. Bogaards was also an avid gardener, a gourmet cook, an accomplished hostess, and an insatiable traveller. She enjoyed athletics, especially tennis and swimming, and was a great fan of football. And she had a strong concern for society: her charitable causes included the Heart and Stroke Foundation, the Lung Association, Doctors without Borders, the Salvation Army and Friends of Canadian Broadcasting.