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In Ottawa, Waddington began attending meetings of an anti-Fascist group, where she met her future husband, a non-Jew named Patrick Waddington. Now that she was dating a non-Jew, her secularist parents, and especially her father, suddenly became less universalistic in outlook, and according to Waddington her father even threatened suicide. They sent Miriam away to earn a degree at the University of Toronto, apparently in the hope that distance would end the relationship. It did not. After a year as a student in the sciences, she transferred to the arts and earned her B.A. degree in English in 1939.

Despite the persistent sense of being an outsider, Waddington benefited from her time at the university by studying with noted teachers such as A. S. P. Woodhouse and the poet Earle Birney. She became active in university life and worked on the campus newspaper. But contrary to her father’s hope, the romance between Miriam and Patrick did not wilt, and they were engaged to be married in 1939. Seeking to improve on a bad situation, her father looked for a rabbi who would convert Waddington and marry the couple. Rabbi Harry Joshua Stern of Montreal agreed, and the two were married.

The couple lived together in Toronto for the next few years. Miriam decided to return to her studies to earn a diploma in Social Work from the University of Toronto (1942). After two years as a case worker at Toronto’s Jewish Family Service, she decided to pursue an M.S.W. at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, where she met the renowned Jessie Taft and Virginia Robinson and received her M.S.W in 1945.

Already during her years in Toronto and then in Philadelphia, Waddington was writing poetry whenever her work allowed it. She published her poetry in the small but cutting-edge First Statement, where modernist Canadian poets sought to break away from the excessively colonial moorings of earlier Canadian poetry. During this time she met Dorothy Livesay, who came to her apartment in Toronto as a way of getting to know other young modernist poets.

Over the next fifteen years, Waddington balanced her social work career with starting a family and writing. Between 1945 and 1960 she held a number of social work positions in Montreal. She also participated in the very lively literary scene for poets, much of it revolving around First Statement. Her first son, Marcus, was born in 1946, and Jonathan in 1951. The marriage with Patrick Waddington did not fare well and in 1960 the two separated. She moved to Toronto, where she worked for two years as a casework supervisor for North York Family and Child Service.

An important professional development took place in 1962, when Waddington was appointed a part-time lecturer in the English department at York University in Toronto; two years later she began to teach full-time. She remained in the position until her retirement in 1983. During the Montreal years, and especially during her time at York, Waddington wrote most of her poetry, as well as her criticism. In 1992 she moved to Vancouver to be closer to her son Jonathan and his family.

Miriam Dworkin Waddington died on March 3, 2004.

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Unpublished Papers

Miriam Waddington donated her papers to the National Archives of Canada (Ottawa); they have been assigned the call number MG 31 D 54. There is an online finding aid.

Poetry

The definitive collection of poetry is the critical edition by Ruth Panofsky, with an insightful introduction. The Collected Poems of Miriam Waddington. 2 vols. Edited by Ruth Panofsky. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2014.

Prose and Criticism

A. M. Klein. Toronto: Copp Clark, 1970.

John Sutherland: Essays, Controversies and Poems. New Canadian Library, No. 81. Toronto: 1972 (editor and introduction).

 

Canadian Jewish Short Stories. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1990 (editor).

Summer at Lonely Beach and Other Stories. Oakville: Mosaic Press/Valley Editions, 1982.

Apartment Seven: Essays Selected and New. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1989.