One of my fondest memories of Doug is from when he and Anne-Marie – as well as Bryan (Gick) and Kara – came to Suzanne's and my wedding in Manitoba on a sweltering August long weekend, 2001. I had just spent the bulk of the previous academic year in Vancouver with Suzanne while finishing writing my Berkeley dissertation, as something of an unofficial visitor or hanger-on in the UBC Linguistics department, and at this point we were about to move to Chicago. Little did we know that we would be back in Vancouver only a couple of years later, and that I would get the chance to have both Doug and Bryan as colleagues!
The wedding took place in the small town of Gimli, on the shore of Lake Winnipeg. (For those of you not in the know, Gimli is the "capital" of the diasporic Icelandic community in North America – or the "West Icelanders", as we refer to them in Iceland.) Canadian prairie summers are known for two things above all: heat and mosquitoes. Both were plentiful on that day, and there were many pink and shiny faces in the non-air-conditioned church where the service took place. On the way back to Winnipeg for the wedding reception, Doug, Anne-Marie, Bryan and Kara stopped for a swim in the lake, arriving refreshed and ready to party! When food, speeches and toasts gave way to dancing, Doug and Anne-Marie took to the floor and went whirling around, showing dance skills that would certainly have been worthy of Canada's Got Talent.
Below is photo evidence – a candid shot captured by another wedding guest on one of the instant cameras (remember those?) that we had left on every table. Anne-Marie can be seen (her back to the camera) desperately trying to teach the clumsy groom some proper dance moves, and on the left is Doug dancing with the bride (who is outside the frame; wedding guests were not vetted for their photography skills). Astute observers will note that this was before Doug decided to grow a beard and – as Larry Hyman puts it – to dye his hair white.
Doug, I was going to say that you will be sorely missed at UBC Linguistics – and of course you will be, in so many respects – but somehow I don't think we have seen the last of you! I certainly hope we haven't!
In any case, please rest assured that you are leaving us – your colleagues, students, and phonologists of the future – in the very capable hands of our AI robotic overlords! As confirmation of this, I present the illustration shown below the wedding dance photo, which was created by Microsoft Copilot in response to the prompt "Generate an autosegmental diagram illustrating tongue-root vowel harmony in Yoruba". With all due respect to your own copious writings on that topic, Doug, I must admit that I have not found in them an example quite of this, erm, calibre…
🤣 what a great appreciation!! I had forgotten the mosquitoes and the swim!!! Brought me back. It was such a wonderful wedding, especially because you guys were so smart to mix family and friends all over the reception tables. We got to have such great and interesting conversation with both sides of the families and your friends. It was amazing! And the photo 🥰 oh we danced so much. You look so happy ( and so does Doug). What great memories!
And I must say that ai might revolutionize how we “View “ linguistics diagrams as of now! 🤣