Douglas Ellis, December 6, 1923 — May 31, 2024
It is with sadness that McGill’s Department of Linguistics announces the death of Dr. Douglas Ellis co-founder of McGill University’s Department of Linguistics. Born in 1923 in Shawville, Quebec, Douglas Ellis was educated at Montreal Public Schools and at the High School of Montreal. He held degrees in Classics from McGill University, the University of Toronto and Yale and had fellowships at Cornell and the University of Michigan, at both of which he studied Linguistics. He studied Theology at Trinity College, Toronto and Cambridge University. Ordained to the priesthood in 1948, he served at St. Matthias Church in Westmount (Montreal) and for several years at Albany Post on James Bay in the Diocese of Moosonee. In 1953 he was married to Joan Allton of Montreal West.
From 1959 to 1963 Dr. Ellis taught Linguistics in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto and from 1963 to 1991 at McGill University. From 1964 to 1968 he served as Vice-Dean for the Humanities Division in the then Faculty of Arts and Science and was also co-founder of the Department of Linguistics which he chaired for over a decade. On his retirement Dr. Ellis was appointed Emeritus Professor at McGill.
Dr. Ellis helped to provide McGill’s Linguistics Department with superb leadership at a time when other departments were being established in North America and, hence, were competing with McGill’s for academic talent. His work on the Cree Language helped to create the profile of a Department with an interest in North American Indigenous languages that still endures.
After retiring from McGill, he remained active, accepting a position as Adjunct Research Professor at the School of Linguistics and Language Studies at Carleton University, Ottawa.
Author of publications in Classics and Linguistics, Dr. Ellis’s specific focus for many years was on Cree, the most widely spoken indigenous language in Canada. Among his better known publications are âtalôhkâna nêsta tipâcimôwina / Cree Legends and Narratives and Spoken Cree, the latter a three-level Cree Language course (Spoken Cree, Cree Legends and Narratives: Home). Since his first contact with Cree-speaking people at Moose Factory in 1947, the Cree language had become one his major academic preoccupations. He has taught intensive summer courses in Cree for government, medical, and teaching personnel working in the North as well as courses at the university level.
Dr. Ellis is survived by his wife, two children, their spouses and his two grandsons.
(Prepared by Eva Kehayia and Glyne Piggott, partly based on published obituaries such as the one in the Montreal Gazette)