McGill Library
McLennan Library Building3459 rue McTavish
Montreal, Quebec
H3A 0C9
Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Van Toorn, Peter, 1944-2021
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
1944-2021
History
Peter van Toorn was born on July 13, 1944, in a bunker near The Hague, Netherlands.
He was a Canadian poet, editor, and educator. He moved to Canada with his family as a child. He attended McGill University, and during the late 60s and early 70s, he taught at Concordia University. He also taught Creative Writing and Canadian Poetry for almost thirty years at John Abbott College, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec. He was the author of the collections of poems “Leeway Grass” (1970) and “In Guildenstern County” (1973). His masterpiece “Mountain Tea and other Poems” was nominated for the Governor General's Award for Poetry in 1984. He also edited the anthologies “Cross/cut: Contemporary English Quebec Poetry” (1982) and “The Insecurity of Art: Essays on Poetics” (1982).
He died on October 6, 2021, in Montreal, Quebec.