Skip to main content
lives lived
Open this photo in gallery:

Gayle Garlock.Courtesy of family

Gayle Garlock: Father. Librarian. Author. MAID pioneer. Born Feb. 15, 1944, in Hartley, Iowa; died Aug. 26, 2019, in Victoria, of medically assisted death; age 75.

Gayle Garlock lived a relatively conventional life devoted to his family and books. In choosing death, however, he showed extraordinary courage.

Gayle was raised in rural Iowa. He was a mediocre student until his father offered to buy him any book as long as Gayle would read it. Smart father. Lucky kid. That was likely the beginning of Gayle’s love affair with reading and books.

While in university, Gayle worked summers as a park ranger in Colorado. There he met Barbara, who was charmed by his warm smile, thoughtful nature and lack of pretense. Their first date was a hike up Specimen Mountain (3,800 metres). Gayle set off rapidly and Barbara struggled to keep up. How could she slow this guy down? Simple: She told him that she had a heart murmur. That was how their relationship started, with her little white lie.

At summer’s end, a letter writing marathon began. Over two school years they wrote more than 400 letters to one another, sharing their hopes and dreams. They married in May, 1968, and immigrated to Canada that August, one of the best decisions of their lives.

In Edmonton, Gayle completed a PhD program in English literature at the University of Alberta, then a Masters of Library Science at Western before landing his first permanent position at Dalhousie University’s Killam Memorial Library. With a yearly salary of $10,000, he thought he was rich – but not yet rich enough to start collecting books. Instead, he haunted garage sales and the like, searching for binders’ tickets and booksellers’ labels, which would become the subject of his own book 40 years later.

Gayle was born to be a dad. Playing was second nature to him and he had all the time in the world for Mike, Chris and Geoff, his three sons. He baked a batch of brownies every Saturday morning for the neighbourhood kids. Most evenings he hauled a carload of them off to the recreation centre. He took his sons to the local used bookstore where they began buying Archie comics, then Asterix, then “real” books.

Meanwhile Gayle’s reputation was growing within the university library community. He ended his career at the University of Toronto, expressing surprise when so many people attended his retirement reception. He was a humble man, a gentle man, a gentleman. He had an off-beat sense of humour. He treated others with respect.

Two of Gayle’s proudest achievements occurred after retirement. He completed the Boston Marathon, a lifelong dream, at age 61. Then, Oak Knoll Press published his book about the development of the book trade in Canada based on his collection of 800 tickets and labels. Gayle felt such personal satisfaction when his book was purchased by top research libraries in North America and the United Kingdom.

Early in 2014, Gayle was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia. He chose to have a medically assisted death, and it was only the second MAID procedure for a Canadian with a dementia diagnosis. Gayle wanted others to know of this possibility. He knew that his sons and grandsons were his most precious legacies; he believed this to be his most important one.

Barbara Garlock is Gayle’s wife.

To submit a Lives Lived: lives@globeandmail.com

Lives Lived celebrates the everyday, extraordinary, unheralded lives of Canadians who have recently passed. To learn how to share the story of a family member or friend, go to tgam.ca/livesguide

Follow related authors and topics

Authors and topics you follow will be added to your personal news feed in Following.

Interact with The Globe