Diane Bessai (1931-2024)
On April 20, 2024, CATR lost one of its most distinguished prairie pioneers, Diane Bessai, at the age of 92. While Diane was born and died in Ontario, for over fifty years her name was synonymous with Canadian and more specifically Western Canadian theatre scholarship, editing, publishing, mentoring, teaching and advocacy.
Over the course of a distinguished career at the Department of English at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Diane taught and mentored innumerable undergraduate and graduate students from the late 1950s onwards. Her contribution to the emerging field of Canadian Theatre scholarship included many seminal articles as well as her award-winning 1992 book, The Canadian Dramatist, Volume Two: The Playwrights of Collective Creation, an analysis of key figures in the influential collective creation movement in Canada. She also contributed substantially to Western Canadian theatre scholarship and literature as an editor and publisher, promoting and encouraging the work of others. In 1977, Diane, co-founded NeWest Press, a publishing collective aimed at championing Western Canadian literature and drama; she also served as the original theatre editor for the NeWest Review, which ran between 1975 and 2000.
Diane was a strong presence in CATR (originally ACTH, ACTR) during the 1980s and 1990s, not only as a presenter at conferences, but as prairie officer-at-large on the executive from 1981-85, and the founding chair of ACTR/ARTC’s Professional Concerns Committee from 1993 to 1995, where she was praised by Susan Bennett, (ACTR Newsletter 21.2; Fall 1997) for her “persistent and resourceful work” in creating an initial data-bank of prospective jobs for members. The admiration was mutual. In accepting her honorary life membership to CATR in 2000, Diane stated: “I have great respect for this association. Its very existence for a quarter of a century has given people of my generation tremendous support and validation of the work we were beginning to do – at a time when Canadian theatre/drama was considered a marginal area of academic interest.”
What was not mentioned in her acceptance speech was that she managed to become a force in bringing Canadian theatre/drama out of “a marginal area of academic interest,” while raising a family of four boys on her own after the tragic early passing of her husband, Dr. Frank Bessai in 1969. This contributed to making her, in the words of one of her colleagues, “a smart, fun and tough person” of “admirable integrity!” Another commenting on the “deep and thoughtful insights in her work” appreciated her rare gift at meetings for speaking with absolute “clarity and precision when everyone else in the room was stuck in the weeds.”
I remember Diane as brilliant, tough, crusty, and no-nonsense. She did not suffer fools gladly, and if she thought you were being one, she told you that – again pretty frankly. She was also kind, generous, and nurturing, and once she took you into her heart you stayed there. Like Dr. Louise Forsyth, another giant who sadly passed away this spring after a full life of achievement that included raising four children, Diane was truly inspiring to a whole generation of young women scholars. This, not just because she was a successful woman scholar in an academic and publishing system still strongly dominated by men -which gave us hope we could make it too. But also because she was one of those extraordinarily wise, generous, and nurturing human beings who pulled other women up after her.
Diane’s family chose to close her obituary with a line from her favorite poet, W.B. Yeats: ‘Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.’ Godspeed, dear friend – and thank you.
Moira Day