Ọladele Awobuluyi

Douglas as I Remember Him

I was no longer in the Department of Linguistics and Nigerian Languages of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria, when Douglas came there in the early to mid-1970s specifically to study both Yoruba and undergraduate linguistics. However, news of his academic excellence and dogged determination to master spoken Yoruba reached me where I was then at the University of Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria. I took special mental note of that very fascinating and exhilarating piece of news, and when I left the University of Lagos in late 1976 to head both the newly established Department of Linguistics and Nigerian Languages and the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria, he was one of the pioneer members of academic staff that, at the appropriate time, I had the rare privilege of inviting and bringing into that department and faculty. The academic staff of Nigerian universities then was generally much more cosmopolitan than it is now. I remember once having a Ghana-born Nigerian lady, a Cameroonian man, an American lady, an Australian lady, and a Japanese lady all working with me and other Nigerians at the same time in the department! Accordingly, when Douglas arrived, he very easily blended in and quickly settled into his very first academic appointment as an Assistant Lecturer − that designation being in recognition and appreciation of the excellent class of his first degree! He was much liked and very greatly valued in that post for his punctuality, diligence, and unfailing sense of duty both in the department and in the faculty.
During their time in Ilorin, he, his wife, and his then infant daughter lived in my neighborhood with his Nigerian host family of a Nigerian with his French-speaking English wife and their two daughters. Members of my own family readily took to the three of them, and still very fondly remember them as family friends. Thus, when my eldest daughter here was in Vancouver in April 2011 for a Nephrology Conference, she made time out of a very tight schedule to look up Douglas at the University as a still remembered old family friend. An accompanying photo of my wife and the girl as an infant on the left, and Douglas’ wife and her daughter on the right, suggests that the two infants were of the same age group in 1979. The lady and the little girl in the middle of the photograph, whose birthday was then being celebrated, are the survivors of a Nigerian specialist in Acoustic Phonetics that trained in France and returned home to join us but, alas, if I remember correctly now, suddenly passed away within days of officially doing so!
Douglas confirmed my daughter’s visit when I ran into him at the 43rd Annual Conference on African Linguistics at Tulane University, New Orleans, USA, in 2012. He was much younger then of course, and very definitely not the bearded man that he is now! Whether bearded or not bearded as we used to know him, he remains very much appreciated not only for his contributions here, but also for accepting some of my former students here for excellent further training at UBC.
Best wishes for sound health and comfortable living in peaceful retirement, Douglas!

Ọladele Awobuluyi
Ilọrin, Kwara State, Nigeria