Remembering Richard Osler (1951-2024)

The collection of Kathleen Raine materials donated by Richard Osler. (Photo: Christine Walde)

by: Christine Walde, Fine Arts Librarian

I first met poet Richard Osler when I travelled to his home in the Cowichan Valley with my colleague Heather Dean, Associate Director of Special Collections. Richard had contacted us about a potential donation, and Heather and I went together on a sunny afternoon in September 2023 to meet him and learn more about his collection.

As we drove down the driveway, we were greeted by Tugboat, a large and all-bark-but-no-bite gentle giant of a dog. Richard came quickly out of the house, lovingly chiding Tugboat to be quiet, while waving his welcoming hand at us. He was a small man, with cosmic grey ringlets of short curly hair, always smiling, wearing Crocs and casual clothes. As we introduced ourselves, he greeted us with genuine affection and familiarity even though we had never met before. He chatted amiably as we walked into the house, where we were introduced to his partner Somae, who also greeted us warmly. As we talked and moved from room to room, Richard punctuated the conversation with his precocious, infectious, and unmistakable laugh, regaling us with stories of how he had acquired his remarkable collection of books and art.

Richard had initially reached out to us regarding his comprehensive collection of materials by the British poet Kathleen Raine that included chapbooks and broadsides, first editions, proofs, photos, ephemera, letters (including one from Alice B. Toklas!) and many, many other items of historical, biographical, and literary history. These materials, as Richard intuited, would complement the libraries’ Kathleen Raine collection, comprised of correspondence, a diary, notebook, and other manuscripts, Heather and I took some photos, took note of the size and content, and thanked Richard for his time, promising to return soon.

In September 2024, a year after we had first visited and while Heather was on study leave, Richard informed us that he was dying of stage 4 cancer and was still looking for a home for the Raine materials, and I offered to come back to Cowichan to collect them. As I drove up the driveway, Tugboat dutifully barked, and Richard once again emerged from the house to greet me. He was just as friendly as he had been on our first visit even though he admitted to feeling more tired. His energy, enthusiasm, and passion for life, however, was indefatigable. He had just submitted final edits for his final poetry collection, What Holiness Will I Bring, knowing it would be published before his death, and he was overjoyed.  

Wearing his Crocs decorated with charms of Grogu, Richard accompanied me out to the room where the Raine materials were stored. The walls were shelved with other books on cosmology, religion, medicine, science fiction, math, and history, and on the table in the centre of the room were scattered postcards he had been cutting up to use in collage. The rails of a miniature train track ran in a circle on the floor below. Despite his fatigue, he stayed to help sort and stack the collection, dropping f-bombs as he relished the marginalia by Raine in the margins of the page. Like his forefathers before him, Richard was a true bibliophile and found joy in books and all forms of printed matter. But unlike our last visit, he told me he had to go lie down.

By the time I'd finished boxing everything up, it was after 4 p.m., and I'd had to cancel every other afternoon meeting I was supposed to have. But it didn't matter. What Richard had donated to us was extraordinary: a complete collection of a woman's life's work, carried forward in time and space into Richard's possession, and now to ours to steward in Special Collections and University Archives.

Sadly, Richard passed away only six weeks later. But when I attended his memorial service at the end of November, I was astounded by the number of people — from all professions and walks of life — who had also known the man with the Crocs and the curly hair and the exclamatory "Ha!" of barbaric yawp of laughter. At the end of the celebration of life, we all got up and danced to Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up."

When he learned that the Raine material would be situated with the existing collection as well as her modernist contemporaries pre-existing in our collections, including Herbert Read, Robin Skelton, Percy Jarrett, and others, it gave Richard peace and satisfaction to know his donation would not only augment our existing collections but fill an important gap to understanding the larger contributions of Raine to modern poetry, criticism, and culture.