Kathleen Currie Hall

My first in-person encounter with Doug was when we shared an office at the LSA Summer Institute in Boulder, CO, in the summer of 2011. I was of course thoroughly intimidated as a newly minted professor to be sharing an office with esteemed colleagues like Doug, but he soon set me at ease and then whisked me off on my first outdoor adventure with him and a number of other lucky linguists, hiking Mount Sanitas (where I got attacked by a tree but saved by his handy first-aid kit). I was nonetheless nervous when he interviewed me the following winter for a possible job at UBC, in part because I so desperately wanted the opportunity to join his department! Coming to UBC was an incredible experience, and Doug went out of his way to make that transition as smooth as possible, academically and personally. He has served as a mentor from the very beginning; co-teaching a grad seminar with him on tone was a truly inspiring experience, and I couldn’t have asked for a better co-supervisor for my first PhD student, Zoe Lam. And, I’m still e-mailing him more than a decade later with the hard data questions that students ask me; I really hope he doesn’t completely stop responding to such inquiries post-retirement! The thing I will miss most about having Doug around on a daily basis, though, is his heartfelt and incredibly infectious delight in all aspects of life, from thorny phonological problems to the glorious environment that we’re lucky enough to live in, to sharing delicious food with those around him. Thank you for everything, Doug, and I hope you will continue to share your adventurous outlook with us!