Leslie Saxon on 40 years of fieldwork

Leslie Saxon (MA 1979, now at the University of Victoria) writes to us reflecting on her fieldwork experiences as a student in our department, which started her on a long and productive career with linguistics and Aboriginal languages in particular.

Today [May 1st, 2017] is the 40th anniversary of my first research trip to the NWT as Keren’s Rice’s research assistant. I am a linguistics prof now because of that time with Keren and colleagues in Yellowknife, Fort Good Hope, Colville Lake, Norman Wells, Delı̨nę (then Fort Franklin), and Behchokǫ̀ (then Rae-Edzo). Thank you to Keren, Elizabeth, Jack, and all of the amazing staff and students of the U of T Linguistics department when I was there, and to all of the many language specialists in the NWT who went out of their way to support my learning of Dene languages and linguistics.

Thanks for this Leslie, and if anyone else has thoughts or memories from the department back in the day, please send them! (utlinguistics [at] gmail [dot] com)