Timothy Irving Frederick Findley (October 30, 1930 – June 20, 2002) was a Canadian novelist and playwright. He was also informally known by the nickname Tiff or Tiffy, an acronym of his initials. He also played Peter Pupkin in Sunshine Sketches, the CBC Television adaptation of Stephen Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town.

Career

Though Findley had declared his homosexuality as a teenager, he married actress/photographer Janet Reid in 1959. The union lasted only three months and was dissolved by divorce or annulment two years later. — and was heavily influenced by Jungian psychology. Mental illness, gender and sexuality were frequent recurring themes in his work. Many of his novels centred on a protagonist who was struggling to find the moral and ethical and rational course of action in a situation that had spun wildly out of control. His characters often carried dark personal secrets, and were often conflicted – sometimes to the point of psychosis — by these burdens.

Findley and Whitehead also collaborated on several documentary projects in the 1970s, including the television miniseries The National Dream and Dieppe 1942.

He publicly mentioned his homosexuality, passingly and perhaps for the first time, on a broadcast of the programme The Shulman File in the 1970s, taking host Morton Shulman completely by surprise.

Findley and Whitehead resided at Stone Orchard, a farm near Cannington, Ontario, and in the south of France.

In 2002, he was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame.

Death

Findley died on June 20, 2002, in Brignoles, France, not far from his house in Cotignac.

Findley and the development of his theatrical play The Stillborn Lover were profiled by Terence Macartney-Filgate in the 1992 documentary film Timothy Findley: Anatomy of a Writer.

Quotations

  • "When we have stopped killing animals as though they were so much refuse, we will stop killing one another. But the highways show our indifference to death, so long as it is someone else's. It is an attitude of the human mind I do not grasp. I have no point of connection with it. People drive in such a way that you think they do not believe in death. Their own lives are their business, but my life is not their business. I cannot refrain from terrific anger when I am threatened so casually by strangers on a public road." – from 1965 journal, at p. 16 of Journeyman: Travels of a Writer.
  • Order of Canada Citation
  • Timothy Findley and William Whitehead fonds (R4441) at Library and Archives Canada
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