Eva Kushner, a pioneer of the Quebec literary field, died last Saturday at the age of 93 in Toronto. The one who left her native Czechoslovakia in 1939 to flee the Holocaust was one of the first to critically analyze Quebec poetry, when she was a literature professor at Carleton University and McGill University.
The former teacher arrived in France with her mother and sister around the age of 10. His father, for his part, joined the Czech squadron of the Royal Air Force. The Holocaust decimates the family: 27 members of Eva Kushner’s family — including her grandfather, her uncle and her aunt — perish in the concentration camps. Some time after entering French territory, it became occupied by Nazi Germany. “They were of the Jewish faith in occupied France, so [ma mère] was always at risk,” says his son Roland Kushner.
Quebec poets
After World War II, the Kushner family reunited in Montreal, where Eva Kushner studied at McGill University and earned a doctorate in French literature in 1956. From the 1960s, as a professor at Carleton University , she analyzes Quebec poetry and focuses more particularly on two poets: Rina Lasnier and Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau. She signed books about them between 1962 and 1970. “She was really proud of it”, testifies Roland Kushner. “She couldn’t stop talking about them,” he said.
Kushner became interested in women poets in Quebec at a time when this was not done.
The analysis of Quebec poetry is rare at the time. “Not many of them wrote about it, did research, took the trouble to devote a book to a Quebec author,” explains Lucie Robert, professor of literature at the University of Quebec in Montreal. “Kushner became interested in women poets in Quebec at a time when that was not done,” notes Lucie Robert. According to the UQAM professor, Eva Kushner maintained a correspondence with Rina Lasnier for a long time.
Figurehead in academia
In 1976, after her stay at Carleton University, Eva Kushner returned to Montreal to direct the French department of her alma mater. According to Marc Angenot, professor emeritus at McGill University, the Czech has “restarted” a department where the knives were flying low. “She showed a remarkable ability to calm things down,” explains Marc Angenot. Eva Kushner was a recognized and respected figure wherever she went. “She wasn’t a show-off person — she was very modest,” he says.
For a few years, Eva Kushner commuted between Montreal and Ottawa, where her sons remained. She was one of the models of Lucie Robert, who was then a student at Laval University. “She was a woman with a job as a university professor and raising a family at the same time, and that, I had never seen before,” she says. According to her son Roland, Eva Kushner sometimes made the bus trip. “If she wanted to do something, she did it. She was determined,” he says proudly.
Later in her career, Eva Kushner left for Toronto. Beginning in 1987, she served as Dean of Victoria University — a federated post-secondary institution associated with the University of Toronto — becoming the first woman to preside over an Ontario university. Ten years later, the former refugee was recognized by the Order of Canada. “The comparative literature work of this prominent figure in Canadian academic circles is internationally authoritative,” reads the Order’s website.