It was a weekday afternoon in late September 2013, and a tall man with round glasses, wearing all black, stood facing the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf in his office. David Gilmour spoke about the authors on the wall: Proust, Chekhov, and himself.
He was responding to Emily Keeler, a reporter for the literary magazine Hazlitt. Gilmour had offered that he mostly taught the books on this bookshelf, and Keeler noted the lack of women writers in the room. Gilmour replied with an incendiary comment that would make national and international headlines:
“When I was given this job, I said that I would only teach the people that I truly, truly love. And, unfortunately, none of those happen to be Chinese, or women … I say I don’t love women writers enough to teach them, if you want women writers, go down the hall. What I’m good at is guys… Very serious heterosexual guys. Elmore Leonard, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chekhov, Tolstoy. Real guy-guys. Henry Miller. Philip Roth.”
In response, protests were held at Victoria College, where he taught from 2007 to 2021, calling for Gilmour’s removal. Professors across various departments quickly condemned and distanced themselves from Gilmour’s statement. However, the Principal of Victoria College defended his right to comment, and Margaret Atwood cited his right to “free expression.”
In response to the backlash, Gilmour stated that he was “sorry for the mess this has caused.” This apology came shortly before the awarding of the 2013 Giller Prize, for which he was nominated. In his apology, Gilmour mentioned that the protagonist in his upcoming book was a woman, and that he wanted to placate potential readers of his novel with his apology. Shortly after making them, he stood by his previous statements, insisting that he was simply careless with his language.
In recent years, Gilmour taught the courses “Love, Sex and Death in Short Fiction,” “Creative Writing,” and the “The Novel: A Masterclass,” until he stopped teaching at Victoria University altogether after the Winter 2021 semester.
In the spring of 2021, The Strand reached out to the Dean of Students, Kelley Castle, about Gilmour’s then-ongoing employment. Castle was unwilling to comment on Gilmour or on his status at the university.
After the Hazlitt interview in 2013, the University of Toronto released a statement noting the “offensive implications” of Gilmour’s remarks. UofT administration promised that they would “ensure that students in his class are under no misapprehensions that Mr. Gilmour’s literary preferences may be translated into assumptions about their innate abilities.”
And yet, the testimonies of his former students tell a different story. The Strand conducted three separate interviews with three of Gilmour’s former students in his class “Creative Writing” in the 2020–2021 school year. The students, emerging writers themselves, spoke to The Strand on condition of anonymity citing Gilmour’s considerable influence as a literary figure and professor. One of the students (“Student One”) expressed to The Strand that “Even as we’re conducting this interview, I’m afraid he’ll find out somehow that I spoke to you… I have this crippling sense of fear and anxiety just thinking about it.”
Another student (“Student Two”) detailed the comments that she says Gilmour made towards her in class, saying that he implied multiple times that she was dating or sleeping with another student, and compared her often to his ex-wife. The student also reported that Gilmour made sexist comments about women in general, such as referring to them as “beautiful” or “adorable” while introducing men as “distinguished” or “talented.”
Student Two, along with two of her classmates, reported that Gilmour said “I have to keep a tissue box in my office for my female students.” The students said that, in the same incident, he made a personal remark about another student’s (“Student Three”) reaction to his critique of her work. She, as well as Student Two, recalled him saying “You took that like a man, thank you for taking that like a man” when Student Three’s work was criticized.
The three students The Strand spoke to remarked that before class started, Gilmour often went on offensive and bizarre tangents about world events. The Strand has obtained an audio recording in which Gilmour makes comments about not wanting to sit next to Meghan Markle on an airplane, unless he could “go home” with her. Student Two reported that he asked his students to “bet on how many people would die” as a result of the US Capitol riots, an incident that Student Three also recalled. Student Three told The Strand that Gilmour once said, “Bad writing makes me want to put the author in a concentration camp.”
Student One recalled that Gilmour directly confronted her regarding her identity during class, asking her “What do [Student One’s Ethnicity] ladies like?” He told her that he “had been lucky enough to have dated a couple of [Student One’s Ethnicity] girls” and that they “like to be treated especially well.” Gilmour also told Student One. “my son adores [Student One’s Ethnicity] women. He has a real thing for [Student One’s Ethnicity] women,” and asked her how to get women of her ethnicity to like his son. The Strand has obtained an audio recording of this conversation. Student One explained, “He looked at me as if I could answer on their behalf, speak for [Student One’s Ethnicity] women everywhere and explain what was wrong with us that we apparently did not like his son.”
Student One elaborated on the impact that this incident had on her. “Was he asking the male students about their dating habits? Why was he asking [me] a question like that in the first place? It’s not only unprofessional, but coming from an old man in a position of authority and power… the question came off as creepy and on the cusp of predatory. Even if he was ‘just curious,’ how is that a proper question to ask in the middle of class? … It’s so normal for him to make a comment like that. And I’ve excused him so many times that I didn’t get angry about it until I told my parents and my family … They told me they sent me to school to learn, not be fetishized for my ethnicity.”
Student One expressed that she felt the need to alter the form and content of her writing in Gilmour’s class. She chronicled her experience as a writer during Gilmour’s class by noting the ways in which his style effaced other cultures and perspectives. “I changed [my writing] to accommodate him because I want a good grade in that class… I started off writing more lyrical, more flowery… I was writing about my family and my culture. I would include names and words [from my culture]. But he did not like that stuff… he wanted us to sound like him, in an experience that he could understand. He really liked the students who tried to emulate him.”
Gilmour’s stated literary preferences left little opportunity for students to express themselves in writing styles dissimilar to his own. There are few creative writing classes offered at UofT’s St. George campus, leaving students who write in fantasy or sci-fi genres with very limited options. Student One explained that “he says from the beginning, no fantasy, no science fiction … but if you look at the history of those two genres, they’re minority genres… With magical realism and high fantasy, half of the [Student One’s ethnicity] literature I’ve read is all about dragons and prophecies and kings and fairies. So how am I supposed to write within my own culture and background and literary tradition? If I can’t write with at least a few fantasy elements, how am I supposed to even see myself in my own writing?”
This environment served to hinder the students’ growth as writers. “Did he make my writing better or tighter? Or did he make me sound like a white person?” asked Student One. “I started off writing about my own culture and I ended the year writing about Natalies and Carolines and Andrews because that’s what I knew he could relate to. And guess what? I ended the year with much higher grades and verbal praise from him about how much I’d grown as a writer. Bullshit. The only thing that had changed was the names, and the point of view… I had to distance myself from my own identity.”
Despite UofT’s 2013 statement, Student One’s story contradicts the assumption that minority students were not harmed by Gilmour’s restricted literary preferences. Student One said that “He explicitly said he considers only the classics in literature worth teaching—the old white guys that I’ve been forced to read as an English major anyway … I started writing as a way to write myself into the Western narrative, the English literary tradition, and he made me feel like that kind of work just wasn’t worth reading.”
Student Three explained her views on the pressure that Gilmour’s preference for white, male authors had on her: “You have to work extra hard as a woman to earn his respect. He expects women to come into the class and write fluff and just romance … I had to work extra hard to prove to him that I can write in a fashion that he would consider as manly.”
Student Three continued with a story about her apprehensions in class: “I wanted to write a story that had a queer relationship … He brought it up in class … As soon as he was like, ‘Oh, so was it a girl and a girl?’ I was like, ‘No, it’s a girl and guy’, because I felt like he was going to fetishize it or make it weird in a way that I really didn’t want for the story.”
Students felt they could not speak up against him. Student One explained that “In an environment like that… you can’t speak up and tell him that he’s making you uncomfortable. You can’t refuse to answer. He’s created an environment where not only do you have to answer, you have to smile and thank him for the question.”
Students One and Two expressed fear about their grades and their careers if they were to challenge Gilmour. Student Two told The Strand that “he said that I lost a mark just based on the fact that he didn’t like my nonchalant attitude.” Student Two also told The Strand that Gilmour said her grade was based on “how much I like you.” The students expressed how the class had a sparse, bare-boned syllabus and that they were unsure about how they were to be marked because they rarely received grades throughout the year. The Strand reviewed Gilmour’s syllabus and found the topic for each lecture was simply labelled “short story,” and the marking scheme consisted only of “40% Christmas appraisal,” “40% May appraisal,” and “20% attendance and participation.”
These students felt that Gilmour’s status as a published author emphasized the imbalanced relationships between him and them, as young writers. Student One opined that “He builds himself up to a point that his opinion on our writing becomes sacred. [His approach to teaching] makes us feel like he’s our one real ticket … If we want to write professionally, we have to do everything he says … because if you’re not on his good side, you won’t succeed in this business. It’s this pressure … hanging over our heads every second we spend in his class.”
Student concerns about Gilmour’s philosophy and practices as a professor were not limited to the 2020–2021 academic year. In 2013, Miriam Novick, who is now a professor of English at Humber College, co-organized a demonstration to protest the comments Gilmour made during his Hazlitt interview. Many people attended the demonstration on September 27, 2013, and many more voiced their support through social media channels such as the protest’s associated Facebook page. Novick allowed The Strand access to the since privated page to review the comments from 2013.
The day before the demonstration, a CityNews reporter requested to speak with students who had taken Gilmour’s courses. Catriona Spaven-Donn, a former student of Gilmour’s, replied and wrote, “He used the shock factor as a teaching technique and was constantly offensive and upsetting in his assertions on women and sex in the texts he made us read (we had no choice to opt out of these or influence what he put on the syllabus).” Spaven-Donn wrote that one of the texts read in class was Tell The Women We’re Going by Raymond Carver, which includes a “female character who appears to be raped and stoned to death,” and that Gilmour asked the class if the character “deserved what she got.”
Spaven-Donn took Gilmour’s class as part of the Vic One program in the 2010-2011 academic year, and expressed to The Strand that it was “disappointing” that Gilmour could “continue to get away with making racist, misogynistic comments a whole decade after similar concerns were raised.”
Victoria University spokesperson, Liz Taylor Surani, and Victoria College Principal Angela Esterhammer told The Strand that if students have concerns about their experiences in the classroom, they may reach out to the following faculty and staff on campus: the Office of the Principal, the Office of the Registrar and Academic Advising, Program Coordinators, and faculty or peer mentors. Additionally, students may access UofT-wide resources, such as the Office of the Provost, Students, and UofT’s Equity Offices.
The Strand reached out to the president of the Victoria University Students’ Administrative Council (VUSAC), Jerico Raguindin, about the implications of Gilmour’s time at Victoria, and how the College handles instances of discrimination. About Gilmour’s employment, he said “[Victoria College needs] to say that they had employed a professor… who is racist, insensitive, bigoted, and sexist… Following this, they must identify why this happened, harshly criticizing the systems, structures, practices, policies, and people that allowed this to occur.”
Raguindin posed the following questions to Victoria College: Why has no action been taken and what is their justification for their tolerance of Gilmour? Why is the onus always on students to combat the worst aspects of our institution? What progress is being made and how is the College involving marginalized communities and students?
Raguindin added that “[VUSAC] would also call for Victoria College faculty and staff to be trained in deep and diverse equity training and even more urgently for those who are supporting students … This progress can only be made with marginalized folks in leadership positions and students as equal partners.”
On why students are uncomfortable with raising these concerns to the College, Raguindin explained that “this could be indicative of multiple failures: the lack of communication and transparency regarding accountability measures, the lack of follow through and belief of students against professors, a competitive environment where students feel their only option is to stick with the class, and an institution fundamentally unaware of the effects and experience of oppression and discrimination.” He urged Victoria College: “student support must be democratic, intersectional, and trauma-informed. Students are experts of their own experiences and their own needs. A university must engage in equal decision-making and good faith dialogue with students in order to create true systems of accountability and more importantly, a culture of proactiveness.” Raguindin also stressed the need for equity issues to be resolved within a reasonable timeline, rather than years after the events took place.
Both David Gilmour and Victoria College declined to comment on what the three students from Gilmour’s 2020–2021 class told The Strand. Victoria University spokesperson Liz Taylor Surani stated that “the University cannot discuss or investigate anonymous allegations that were not sent directly to the University.” The Strand did receive an unsolicited email from someone, describing themself as a colleague of Gilmour’s, who praised his teaching style and emphasized his professional accolades. However, this communication did not specifically address any of the incidents reported here. When The Strand followed up with Gilmour about the incident in his 2010–2011 Vic One class, Gilmour replied, “Here’s a quote. ‘Fuck you’ en plus ‘I have been alive too long, endured too many assholes, to be intimidated by a fuck-wit like you guys.’ Am I making myself clear?’”
Victoria College declined to comment on a number of other questions raised by The Strand. These included: whether the College took any internal action against Gilmour in light of his 2013 comments and why Gilmour remained employed at the College after making his 2013 comments. Victoria University’s spokesperson and Principal Esterhammer also declined to comment on Gilmour’s status as an employee. In an email to The Strand, Surani stated that “Victoria University cannot discuss HR-related matters as these are strictly confidential.”
Gilmour, however, did provide his perspective on his departure from the Creative Expression and Society program. “I got the boot, that’s how I left Vic,” wrote Gilmour in an email to The Strand. “That skinny, humourless little bitch, [Vic Administrator], never much liked me—and vice versa—and got rid of me as soon as she could decently do so unlike the great guys who hired me, Prof. Paul Gooch and Prof. Cook, who gave me a life-changing experience. Lord, I loved teaching there under their guidance.”
The stories of Gilmour’s students are as impactful as they are harrowing, and they represent the perspectives of just three students from one of Gilmour’s classes. It is painful to realize how many stories may be left untold and how many complaints may remain unaired. As their testimonies suggest, Gilmour’s power over them as their professor had the effect of silencing and scaring many of his students.
“Faculty members, students, alumni, and the administration of Victoria College have made clear that they in no way share Mr. Gilmour’s views about novels by women or about other groups of literary works,” stated Surani in an email to The Strand. Despite this assertion, and despite his departure, Victoria University remains responsible for allowing Gilmour to occupy a position at the College while being aware of his discriminatory literary preferences. Gilmour’s 2013 interview should have been the canary in the coalmine; the College should have investigated the impact of his comments on his students. Gilmour is but one professor, and this power imbalance can still rear its head in any classroom. Victoria College must find a more effective way to allow students facing discrimination to get the support that they need.
Victoria College has a responsibility towards past and present students of UofT who studied under David Gilmour even though he has left his post. Still, the Creative Expression and Society program is predominantly taught by white professors. A wider breadth of voices in the Creative Expression and Society program and the wider College is non-negotiable.
For the first September since 2007, Creative Expression and Society students have not learned from Gilmour’s bookshelf, containing Proust, Chekhov, and himself. But Victoria College’s bookshelves must continually be re-examined and reimagined, so that the voices of young writers are no longer moulded and stifled to reflect the taste of professors who cannot find beauty in voices that are not their own.
With files from Khadija Alam.
No one had to take his class. If you did take his class after the widely publicized incident in 2013, you were probably trying to find something salacious to write about, to be antagonized into productivity (which was why I took his class 2018-2019), or to feel you were supporting freedom of expression in a world full of artificial wokeness and insipid virtue signalling.
Gilmour said incredibly outrageous things because he fancies himself a provocateur, and because he wanted students to drop the class so he wouldn’t have to read so much student work.
How about instead of droning on about this drone, we take a moment to celebrate another professor in the same program? Prof Albert Moritz (poet laureate of Toronto) teaching in the Creative Expression and Society program at Vic. Super-human/humane capacity for fostering creative development and can recommend and appreciate poetry written by any type of human, from any corner of the world! Energy goes where energy flows. Gilmour has left the building. Let’s celebrate the great ones who are still there.
I would also like to add that there were many classes which counted as credit in the Creative Expression and Society minor, taught by highly gifted and intelligent women. Two such classes I took towards this minor were the Semiotics of Visual Art taught by Carla Taban, and playwriting taught by Djanet Sears. Another class counting towards the Creative Expression and Society minor was the Business of Cinema out of Innis College. Plenty of opportunities to avoid having Gilmour as an instructor. I understand that younger people might not have known what they were getting into, but anyone who was serious about writing and had access to the internet could have easily looked into Gilmour before taking the class. And, with the prevalence of sites that encourage us to rate our profs, we often do research them before signing up for classes. Personally, I like to imagine Jordan Peterson and David Gilmour having lunch together every week … driving each other insane with their limited worldviews. Sometimes I imagine Ms. Peggy Atwood–another famed Vic alum–joins in, and gives them both a chuckle, recreating that smug twitter pic of her holding up the”I told you so” mug when Roe V Wade was overturned. Nothing more I want to see than a filthy rich member of the neoliberal establishment say “I told you so” online, while poor women and children in real life are knocked up and terrified they may not have access to reproductive health care. Of course, I still support her right to say I told you so in terms of freedom of expression, because I am pretty sure that with each time we are forbidden a freedom of expression from the left or the right, that Lenny Bruce rolls over in his grave and shoots himself up with heroin again, just to make sure he stays dead. Perhaps I am using satire to prove a point … humans–myself included–are often vain, blind to their own biases, insipid and outrageous. Gilmour did us a favour by being transparent about it.
In fact, in one of our classes he said, “What’s wrong with saying a woman has great tits?” There was a journalist in the room on fellowship. She dropped out the following week, though I don’t believe she ever reported on the comment. I did, however, write an epigram inspired by the incident dedicated to poetry professor Moritz (mentioned in my above post) for the sheer magnitude of his decency:
For Mortitz:
The solitary life is very hard.
Yet, proceed should it help you become a bard.
For many men have been great tits,
but very few ever get to be great wits.
The spelling error was accidental in the last reply … but I kinda like it. MORE TITZ! Though perhaps the poem should be called “More Ritz, Less Titz.” It, much like humanity, is a work in progress.
News flash: Nobody has to take a writing class to get a novel published. In fact you’d be far better off getting a degree in law or in philosophy — at least you might learn some things that could inform your writing. Find your inner Hemmingway, or Maya Angelou. Publishing houses don’t give a rat’s ass where you went to school and practised scribbling short stories.
Gilmour is a gift. The ad hominem criticism is deliciously ironic.
He sounds like a massive dick. But no one is under any obligation to teach writers or books of a certain nature. It’s a problem if the course is mandatory and purports to be a survey of some kind or is supposed to be inclusive. But art is by nature exclusive. I don’t NOT like women writers but I don’t automatically like a writer BECAUSE she’s a woman. Or Chinese or whatever. This doesn’t excuse his racism and his comments clearly opened the door to all this other stuff but university professors should teach who they think can best help students learn. Unless we are just totally admitting that university education is merely transactional in which case students should pick the syllabus. And all get As because no one can be wrong or bad.
100% get this guy out of there but don’t conflate the issues. The prof is the expert and we can/should/must defer to their expertise when coming to learn.
I hadn’t quite understood who David Gilmour was until after I entered his class, missing the articles from 2013 as a student a few years later. I took the Novel course, which sounded amazing on paper: spend a year in this course writing and workshopping a manuscript. For someone who wants to be a creative writer but is so bogged down by undergrad coursework, it looked like a real godsend. But after the first few weeks, it was apparent that Gilmour was not just “a boomer” we had to put up with. It’s not like he was pressuring us to write with pen and paper and attend bullfights, but he was actively sexist and racist. On top of that, he was intimidating and unpredictable. One could never tell, even if they did emulate him, if he was going to tear you to shreds, or better yet, call on your classmates to say for him what he wanted to say. He repeatedly called women “babe,” and if men did not live up to his standards, he attempted to humiliate them. I don’t know what control he had over enrollment, since it was a course one had to apply for, but I was one of only two male students in the class, with about ten young women, many of whom had classes with him before, and they received not only a creepy amount of attention but also preferential and kinder treatment. He had a rule that if he called on you, you had to say something or lose marks (marks we never had access to and which he never visibly recorded), and he asked me to point out what he thought a student did wrong, so I started couching my words a bit looking for what he wanted. He then interrupted me and asked the class “Does someone with balls want to say what he’s trying to say?” He was unprofessional with the classes being whatever he wanted, saying whatever he wanted. He had us watch an hour-long short film he thought an example of good writing, only to say at the end “huh, that must have been the wrong film, it’s not as good as I remember.” He never gave us marks and in fact told us that he would NOT be reading our work. When we handed in manuscripts, he asked us to choose what we thought was best and put that first, but otherwise, he would just give us a completion mark. I received no feedback on my writing (good or bad) from him apart from what comments he made in class, there was no transparency about my marks, and I had to choose between, “do I continue to show up to keep me motivated to write and hopefully get something from my peers, or drop out to avoid a professor who couldn’t care less about teaching, let alone respecting the students who have come to him for guidance, especially if they weren’t young women?” When I brought him my December work, I told him I stayed up late doing a thorough edit, and all he said is “Really? You’re not lying? That takes balls.” And as far as I can tell, he didn’t read any of it. Furthermore, I did do most of my rough work with pencil and paper, and he asked for my notebooks for proof that I did do the work. At our last meeting, I asked if I could have them back, and he said that it would be too embarrassing for me, and that if I really wanted them back to wait a few years first and then see him. Now that he’s leaving, I imagine I’ll never see them again, and I am 99% sure he never read a single word I wrote.
Like with so much education, I enrolled (and stayed) for the opportunity and the promise of the online syllabus, expecting a prestigious university to uphold a high standard for the conduct of its teachers and employees. To blame the students for staying is to release both David Gilmour and the University from accountability– it releases them both from honouring the inherent promise of the safe, intellectual education for which students pay thousands of dollars and accrue life-altering debt. Many “cantankerous boomers” that have reputations we should apparently know about before signing up for their courses manipulate, intimidate, and harass students with no repercussions because they are “just like that,” or “actually really talented though,” or “oh, they’ll retire soon. Tough it out or wait for that.” How about UofT, an institution experiencing an on-going mental health crisis and general low morale, uses one of its many student-funded resources to advocate for the students and hold professors accountable? What if the awful things that can happen here, rare as we hope them to be, aren’t uniformly actually the students’ fault?
Was his class mandatory? If the students didn’t like his demeanour, why bother with the class? He’s a boomer, his stance is well-known and it’s ridiculous that people would try to adapt their writing to please him. Also, I don’t get where the idea that he has some sway in the publishing industry came from. Did anyone actually learn anything from him or did they just learn how to write to supposedly please him and why, why, why would you stay in such toxic environment? WHY? And what is it that you would like to see done about it now? What is the point of this article? Exhausting.
I was motivated to comment on this article but you took the words out of my mouth. WELL SAID!
This comment is fundamentally dismissive: it does not matter why these students took that class, but that they were made to feel uncomfortable and unsafe at UofT. His actions were deplorable and disgusting – that should not be acceptable conduct in a UofT professor. Why stay in a class with a professor like that? There are so many reasons, but again, it DOES NOT MATTER WHY THEY STAYED. What matters is making sure these students feel heard and that this form of behaviour is not seen again at the University. The point of this article was sharing what actually happened, not brushing it under the rug. Please consider the harmful effects that dismissing people’s lives experiences have in future.
That doesn’t begin to understand the situation but yes it was mandatory. You could not drop his class without dropping out of the entire Vic one program. This would have meant withdrawing from four classes in that semester and then choosing classes for your second semester after classes had been on for a few weeks. None of that though explains why the university would throw its weight behind a known misogynist and expect seventeen year olds, which I was when I took the class and experienced similar behaviour, to set him straight.
If the class was part of the VIC One Program than it was mandatory for anyone who was in the literature stream of the program. This article also addresses some of your questions in regards to the power dynamics and how these dynamics function both on individual and systemic levels. I think the actual question we should be asking ourselves is one raised in the article: Why was he allowed to continue teaching given that his inappropriate behaviour and bigoted attitude were widely known? The responsibility of answering this question does not and should not rest on the backs of students. The onus is on Victoria College.
For the former students reading this, who were afraid to speak up, and write as yourselves, who took the classes in fear of the power your instructor wielded: Don’t be afraid. He has no influence over whether you’ll be published or not. I hope you’ll write what you want to write, and send it out without fear. (This is written by someone working in Canadian publishing, who wants you to succeed.)
And he taught the only novel course at UofT, aside from the writer-in-residence program. In my fourth year I finally applied and was accepted – there were no other writing courses to take. But I was already an experienced, even published writer. So I simply adapted my work to fit his standards, and left my real writing at home.