William J Turkel

I had the privilege of working with Doug between 1994 and 1997 while I was employed full time as a programmer and doing an MA in Linguistics part time. When I was revising my thesis for submission, I remember feeling badly that I had not had a reason to cite any of Doug's papers. He taught me everything I knew about phonology, but more importantly, he mentored me in the day-to-day tasks of academia. When a chapter that we co-wrote came back with a reviewer's snide comment ("competent enough at sums, but dull") I was furious. Doug just laughed out loud and said "Let's move the math to an appendix". I still suggest that to my own students when their work bogs down in technical details. He used his research funding to pay for us to visit MIT and U Maryland, and then allowed me to present our jointly authored talks and field most of the questions. Doug taught me to "mark when you're marking" (although, to be fair, I think that Zen advice was actually due to Anne-Marie). His family welcomed me to their dinner table when Cato, Ingrid and Victor were still young, and he and Anne-Marie welcomed me back years after the kids had left home: it felt as if I'd never been away. He showed me that one should lace their boots tight before hiking downhill, but failed to get me to try kombucha, rock climbing, or chiropractic. Doug even made me a cassette tape of music I still listen to: Dizzy Gillespie, Highlife, Flaco Jiménez and Freddy Fender. I left linguistics after I left UBC, and I'm afraid that most of the things I learned about phonology I have since forgotten. But I will always remember Doug's kindness and generosity, and I've tried to model my own behavior as an academic advisor on his example.