Words from Elizabeth's good friend, Margaret Mackay.
Elizabeth Hulse and I both studied as undergraduates at University College in the University of Toronto,
and were taught by some of the same lecturers, but we were not there during the same years and we did
not meet until the 1980s.
I left Canada in 1967 for further study and research at the University of Edinburgh and was to remain in
Scotland throughout the years that followed. A friend, who had left the USA in much the same way, was
the person who brought us together. Historian and author Dr Marinell Ash embarked on a biography of
a remarkable Scotsman, Daniel Wilson (1816 - 1892), in the early 1980s. His life had taken him in the
opposite direction, from Edinburgh to Canada, and to a post teaching literature and history at University
College, in 1853. I was naturally interested in what she was doing (a grand-uncle of mine had been taught
by Wilson) and we discussed her project a good deal. She spent time in Toronto and met Elizabeth in the
course of her research, for which she gave Marinell enthusiastic support and assistance. I soon became
acquainted with Elizabeth too, but from afar.
Marinell had drafted three chapters of her proposed book when she became seriously ill with cancer,
and she passed away in 1988. Another mutual friend, the late Dr James Macaulay, and I were appointed
her literary executors by her lawyer Jane Ryder. Together we approached Elizabeth for guidance, which
she gave at once, and she became the editor of what was to be a multi-authored volume published in
1999 by the University of Toronto Press. She helped us gather a team of contributing scholars who were
specialists in aspects of this Victorian polymath's activities as an antiquarian, educator, administrator,
artist, and pioneer in ethnology and archaeology. He is credited with introducing the term "prehistory"
to the English-speaking world. He was ambidextrous, and his multifarious achievements prompted the
title of the book, THINKING WITH BOTH HANDS: SIR DANIEL WILSON IN THE OLD WORLD AND THE NEW.
Elizabeth herself wrote a chapter as well as editing all its contents and seeing it through the press.
The experience of working with Elizabeth on this project enabled me to appreciate her gifts and skills
as an editor, and it deepened our friendship greatly. She came to Edinburgh for several periods to be
a resident scholar in the School of Scottish Studies and in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the
Humanities at the University of Edinburgh as the book progressed. Her aim in all she did was to
illuminate the past through writing, her own and that of others, that was clear and correct, the
product of meticulous research and attention to detail. One of her own teachers, mentors and
friends was Dr Francess Georgina Halpenny (1919 - 2017), for many years General Editor of the
DICTIONARY OF CANADIAN BIOGRAPHY, among the institutions for which Elizabeth also worked,
Dean of the Faculty of Library Science at the University of Toronto, and Director of U of T Press.
The high standards which she set, as well as her encouragement and support for those to whom
she gave editorial attention, were emulated by Elizabeth throughout her career.
ELizabeth had a great capacity for loyal and lasting friendship. She and I valued the times - all
too infrequent - when we could spend time together in Canada or in Scotland, and in between
we kept in touch by post, telephone and emails. Gifts of knitting and items decorated with her
cross-stitch, both of which she took pleasure in producing, were tokens of her wider interest in
handwork, textiles and fabrics. And newspaper articles and often books which she knew would
delight an exiled Canadian and her architect husband, would arrive as well. In fact, the gifts she
gave to people throughout the world through the work she edited and the subjects she helped
to illuminate, can never be tallied. We know how much her family meant to Elizabeth, and are
deeply grateful for knowing her and her thoughtful ways, and for being part of her world.
Margaret Mackay
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