The U of A Alumni Association mourns the loss of inspirational alumnus Robert Kroetsch, '48 BA, '97 DLitt (Honorary), renowned poet, novelist and teacher who died in a car accident on Tuesday, June 21, 2011 on his way home to Leduc, AB, from the Canmore Literary Festival.
Born and raised on a farm in Heisler, AB, Kroetsch said he "was the first person from my community to get a BA. Anyone actually being a writer was unheard of. It's very romantic to think you just grow up and become a writer."
He lived that romance over a career spanning 46 years during which he received numerous honours, including the Governor General's Literary Award for his 1969 book The Studhorse Man, and being shortlisted for the same award in 2000 for his collection of poetry, The Hornbooks of Rita K. In 2003 he was given a U of A Distinguished Alumni Award; in 2004 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada; and he was recently selected to receive this year's Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Distinguished Artist Award. The U of A Press had also partnered with Kroetsch on seven books and work was just about to begin on another one at the time of his death.
Most of Kroetsch's narrative fiction was deeply influenced by his formative years growing up in the West. "The most important aspect for me was the landscape itself," he said, "living in an almost-prairie environment with a few groves of poplars. I was the only son, so I was often out there by myself in the landscape. I think it was a world that I inhabited with my imagination. It was a landscape that stimulated my imagination. I made up stories."
At Kroetsch's June 27 memorial service in Leduc, author, professor and New Trail columnist Aritha van Herk remembered Kroetsch as being "endlessly curious about the world, and everyone. For him, every moment was a discovery."
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