Long-serving York University faculty member Professor Emeritus Dalton Kehoe passed away July 8 after a two-year battle with ALS.

Kehoe was a professor emeritus and senior scholar of communications in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies (LA&PS), and dedicated more than 50 years of service to York. He was also an alum of the University, where he earned his doctorate in social psychology.

He came to York in 1967 and was the first faculty member hired by the Social Science Division, said LA&PS Dean J.J. McMurtry. 

His contributions to York as a teacher, scholar, public speaker and an organizational development practitioner were recognized widely with numerous awards and accolades. He was honoured for his teaching with the York University Teaching Award, and was named one of the province’s top 30 professors by Ontario’s public educational network.

Additionally, Kehoe taught organizations how to reengage their employees in his role as a senior partner in a consulting firm, and ran seminars for organizations across the continent as well as for Schulich ExecEd.

His research on the effects of learning technology on teaching in both the U.S. and Canada earned him national recognition. He published several textbooks and a breakthrough leadership book titled Mindful Management, and was invited to write and produce a DVD series titled Effective Communication Skills for the largest producer of adult education in the U.S., under their Great Courses program. It was a top release in 2011, receiving positive mentions in The Economist, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

He continued to make an impact at York in the Department of Communications Studies with the Dalton Kehoe Prize, which is awarded to a second-year student who achieved the highest GPA in the “Communication in Everyday Life” course.

“Dalton Kehoe had a distinguished career at York, spanning more than 50 years,” said McMurtry. “His awards, accolades, and research make up part of his legacy.”

Those who wish to share memories or condolence messages can visit the online obituary.

Professor Emeritus Ian Charles Jarvie, formerly of York University’s Department of Philosophy, passed away at age 85 with his loved ones at his side on May 16.

Jarvie was born in South Shields, U.K. on July 8, 1937. He was an admired philosopher, pioneering in the fields of the philosophy of the social sciences and the philosophy and sociology of film. With J. O. Wisdom, John O’Neill and Harold Kaplan, Jarvie founded the journal Philosophy of the Social Sciences, which came to define the field. He nurtured it as a managing editor from 1971 for over 50 years until 2023, when he relinquished its management due to failing health. His publications in the philosophy of film and in the sociology of film, linked below, also created new areas of study which have since flourished.

Jarvie was educated at Dover Grammar School for Boys. He graduated with a BSc (Econ) from the London School of Economics (LSE) in 1958, reading social anthropology. Joseph Agassi, Karl Popper’s assistant, recruited him to philosophy. Jarvie gained his PhD in 1962 under John Watkins’ and Popper’s supervision and often described the latter as his guiding light. From 1960 until 1962, he tutored at LSE and became Popper’s assistant. He then took up a lectureship at the University of Hong Kong for five years, where Agassi had preceded him in 1960. Jarvie was appointed professor in 1967 at the Department of Philosophy and the Department of Social Science at York University. He was the graduate program director for several years in the Department of Philosophy, and he briefly chaired the department in the 1980s, eventually retiring in 2008 as emeritus professor.

Jarvie’s first book, The Revolution in Anthropology (1964), was widely acclaimed. His choice of philosophical method, critical rationalism, was featured in it, combined with his knowledge of social anthropology. In this vein, he published anthropological work on the cargo cults of the South Pacific and contributed to anthropological studies on the media, particularly film. His adherence to functionalism in the study of the social differed from that of Emile Durkheim in that knowledge and ideas must be presented as causal variables. Further, he contended that it must be the case that a functionalist framework with an active role in explanatory ideas requires adopting a rational attitude towards ideas, which aligns with Popper’s influence.

Jarvie collaborated extensively with Agassi on many books and articles, which included the editing with prefaces of several of Ernest Gellner’s collected papers. Their co-authored papers on the rationality of magic, dogmatism, and irrationalism have been widely cited. Their teaching overlapped in Hong Kong for a year, and in 1968 they jointly wrote a book on its state of transition. Agassi was also his colleague at York for 15 years, and they collaborated on editing Rationality: The Critical View (1987), and later, writing A Critical Rationalist Aesthetics (2008).

Jarvie was a Guggenheim scholar in 1986 when he researched his book on Philosophy of the Film: Epistemology, Ontology, Aesthetics (1987). He had an abiding interest in aesthetics and taught it successfully for many years at the University. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. His consolidated publications list includes hundreds of scholarly papers and reviews, in addition to 14 books, of which two were co-authored with Agassi. Furthermore, he managed and co-edited an academic journal for 52 years, and co-edited 17 books. He died, at nearly 86 years of age, with medical assistance, from cancer.

Although prolific as a contributing scholar and editor, Jarvie was a modest man with a genial, optimistic and cheerful attitude. He will be missed by his family, colleagues and his many friends in the academic world. He is survived by his wife, Jeanette Bicknell, their daughter Madeleine, his brother Bruce, and two children, Suzanne and Max, by his former wife, May Jarvie.

Elizabeth “Betty” Sabiston – professor emerita in the Department of English in York’s Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, former acting master of Stong College and an accomplished author – passed away at 85 on April 29.

Sabiston’s career at York began in 1973. Having started as a contract faculty member, she was eventually promoted and earned tenure. She quickly gained the admiration of graduate and undergraduate students alike, as well as the respect of her colleagues at York and abroad. A dedicated, lifelong educator, Sabiston officially retired from the Department of English in 2006 after a remarkable career as scholar and teacher but continued teaching in post-retirement until 2017.

Born in New York state and raised in New Jersey, Sabiston studied at New York University, Indiana University and Cornell University, before coming to York. She was enthusiastic and knowledgeable about her Scots ancestry, that is, her mother’s lowland background and especially her father’s Orkney roots. With emotional and intellectual connections on both sides of the Atlantic, it is fitting that she specialized in the study of 19th- and 20th-century literature in the U.S. and U.K., with particular attention to women authors. In that area, in addition to numerous journal articles, she published The Prison of Womanhood: Four Provincial Heroines in 19th Century Fiction (1987) and Private Sphere to World Stage from Austen to Eliot (2008).

Her close relationship and intellectual collaboration with novelist, poet and Department of French Studies Professor Hédi Bouraoui led Sabiston to focus her attention on his works, inspiring her books The Muse Strikes Back: Female Narratology in the Novels of Hédi Bouraoui (2005) and Perspectives Critiques: L’Oeuvre d’Hédi Bouraoui (2007) – the latter co-edited with friend and McMaster University Professor Suzanne Crosta, arising from an international conference they organized on Bouraoui’s work. She also translated two of Bouraoui’s novels into English. Her attention to Bouraoui led her to study the literature of migration, one of Bouraoui’s strengths, producing therefrom the volume Pluri-Culture and Migrant Writings (2014), co-edited with Department of Politics Professor Robert J. Drummond.

After Bouraoui founded the Canada-Mediterranean Centre at York, Sabiston aided in its administration and produced the Centre’s bilingual online journal Revue CMC Review.

Sabiston served as senior tutor from 1983 to 1989, and acting master from 1983 to 1984, at York’s Stong College. In retirement she also served on the executive board of the York University Association of Retired Faculty and Librarians. 

Sabiston will be missed dearly by all who knew her.

Friends are welcome to join family at a graveside ceremony for Sabiston on May 9 at 1 p.m. at Elgin Mills Cemetery, 1591 Elgin Mills Rd. E., Richmond Hill. In lieu of flowers, donations to the Elizabeth Sabiston Prize in English at York University would be appreciated. For more information and online condolences, visit www.etouch.ca.

Long-serving faculty member Luiz Marcio Cysneiros passed away on March 30. Cysneiros was an associate professor in the School of Information Technology, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, and served York University for more than 20 years.

He was one of the earliest members of the School and played a key role in its evolution. He made significant contributions to the areas of requirements engineering, agent-oriented software development, business modeling and software process.

“Luiz’s passing is a great loss to our School and to the wider academic community. He will be remembered for his many contributions, his kind and compassionate nature, and his unwavering dedication to his students and colleagues,” said Professor Enamul Hoque Prince, director of the School of Information Technology.

“Luiz will always be remembered as a wonderful colleague. When I joined as a new faculty member, he was my go-to person for any questions I had. He was always willing to lend a helping hand and share his insights and knowledge generously,” said Prince.

Cysneiros’ main research areas were requirements engineering, non-functional requirements, requirements for health care domain, agent-oriented software development, business modelling and software process. He was the author of several publications, including book chapters, journal articles, conference papers and more.

The School of Information Technology will host a memorial service at a later date to bring together family, friends and colleagues to share memories and celebrate Cysneiros’ life.