Richard was a member of the English department for 25 years. He was a devoted teacher who always said that he was most interested in helping students develop a “voice” – not only in the classroom, but in life. 

Richard studied and taught ecological and environmental literature (especially English Romantics, American Transcendentalists, and recent writers such as Edward Abbey, Wendell Berry, and Mary Oliver) , nautical literature (e.g. Melville, Conrad, Cooper, London), and twentieth and twenty-first century Canadian and American poetry.

Born and raised in Alabama, where he spent many summers exploring the natural world around him, Richard became an enduring environmentalist.  His Ph.D. dissertation was titled “Conservation and Uses of Nature in the writings of Thoreau, 

Muir, and Abbey.” His collections of poetry include Fuse, a chapbook from Leaf Press (2002), and a haiku pamphlet from Island Scholastic (2003).

Richard frequently shepherded his students out of the classroom, onto the trails, and into the woods, believing that all human success ultimately is related to what we know of, and how we treat, our natural environment.  One reviewer of a collection of Richard’s poems stated that “his poetry demands . . . our acceptance of responsibility for what is becoming of the natural world.” Many people at VIU will remember Richard for the countless hikes he organized to the summit of Mount Benson.

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