Sheila Agnes Egoff

1917 - 2005  (88 years)

• Name	Sheila Agnes Egoff
  Born	1917	Auburn, Androscoggin, Maine, USA   [1]
  Gender	Female
  Died	22 May 2005	Vancouver, , British Columbia, Canada   [1]
  Hall of Fame - Waterloo Region	Bef 2012	, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada   [2]
  Eby ID Number	Waterloo-150673
  Person ID	I150673	Generations
  Last Modified	6 Apr 2024

  
  

  Father	Daniel Egoff,   b. Abt 1880, , Bulgaria ,   d. 1919  (Age ~ 39 years)
  Mother	Lucy Murray,   b. 1890, , Scotland ,   d. 1948  (Age 58 years)
  Family ID	F41700	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

• Notes

  EGOFF, Sheila Agnes - Officer of the Order of Canada, died on May 22, 2005, in her 88th year, at Vancouver, B.C. Born in Auburn, Maine, she grew up in Galt (now Cambridge), Ontario. Her lifelong career as a scholar and critic of children's literature, and pre-eminent promoter of Canadian children's literature in particular, began at the Galt Public Library. After graduating from the University of Toronto and qualifying as a librarian at the University of London (England), she worked at the Children's Room of the Toronto Public Libraries and with their Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books, where experience in serving the reading needs of contemporary children was balanced with learning about four centuries of writing, publishing, and illustrating books for children. After a short period on the staff of the Canadian Library Association, she was recruited to join the faculty of the School of Librarianship at the University of British Columbia soon after its establishment in 1961. By her retirement in 1983 as Professor Emerita, she had sent a generation of enthusiastic promoters of children's books and reading from Vancouver to libraries across Canada, in the United States, and elsewhere. They applied her rigorous message "only the best is good enough for children!" by writing children's books, storytelling, practising and administering children's services in public and school libraries, and contributing to the cultural life of their communities. Her own writing and editing include the books "The Republic of Childhood", "Thursday's Child", "Worlds Within", "Children's Periodicals of the 19th Century", "Only Connect", and two annotated catalogues of holdings in the Arkley Collection of Early and Historical Children's Literature which she attracted to the University of British Columbia Library; also articles, survey reports, and published speeches. Retirement did not stop the flow; her final book "My Life with Children's Books" will appear posthumously in a few months. In addition to the Order of Canada, her public honours include honorary doctorates from the Universities of Alberta, New Brunswick, and Victoria. Among many professional honours are the Award for Lifetime Achievement in Children's Literature Scholarship of the Children's Literature Association and the annual British Columbia Book Prize for Children's Literature which bears her name. Predeceased by her brother George and sister-in-law Luella, she is survived by their sons, her nephews John, Brian, and Christopher Egoff, and John's wife and children, all of Cambridge, Ontario. Donations to the scholarship already established in her name may be sent to the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia. The Record Newspaper newspaper 25 May 2005

  
  

• Sources

  [S490] News - ON, Waterloo, Kitchener - The Record (1994-March 2008), Obituary of Sheila Agnes - May. 25, 2005. [S220] Waterloo Region Hall of Fame Waterloo Region Hall of Fame.

  
  

• Event Map

  Born - 1917 - Auburn, Androscoggin, Maine, USA Died - 22 May 2005 - Vancouver, , British Columbia, Canada Hall of Fame - Waterloo Region - Bef 2012 - , Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada  = Link to Google Earth