Remembering a colleague
Dr. Christopher P. Youé (1948-2018) was a specialist of African history and the author of Robert Thorne Coryndon: Proconsular Imperialism in Southern and Eastern Africa, 1897-1925 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1986).
“In the academic realm, many of us become rather one dimensional. Chris Youé did not do that. He was a working-class kid from east London who became a well-regarded historian of Africa -- student of John MacKenzie (at Lancaster) and John Flint (at Dalhousie). Beyond his research contributions, he long served in the Canadian Association of African Studies and with the Canadian Journal of African Studies (as book review editor, editor, etc.). He also made very important contributions to scholarship by supporting his colleagues as Head for two terms. He was a generous, kind, eccentric soul.
Aside from his scholarly life, he had a passion for soccer (especially West Ham United). I remember many hours spent peering at TV screens through plumes of cigarette smoke in a living room full of animated Englishmen yelling at each other and at what they saw as the unbelievable incompetence of the players on the pitch. I was never an avid fan, but I learned the last names of a large number of players simply by hanging around. Usually first names were replaced with profanity.
His other passion was music. Chris only officially became a performer in the later years of his life (I think he began performing on stages of one variety or another when he just shy of 60 years old). However, I knew Chris for 20 years. He put me up when I first moved to NL to attend grad school. And for me, his children (whom I met at about the same time), for pets, and for neighbours on the other side of his very thin downtown row-house walls, his music career began at least ten years earlier. He covered Jackson Browne, Cat Stevens, Warren Zevon, the Counting Crows… and many more. What strikes me most about Chris is the wide array of interests he had and people he connected with. He loved history and the university. He also loved and did a lot more.”
Kurt Korneski
Read the obituary in the Telegram here.