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Thomas Lee York

(Also known as "Tom York")

Thomas Lee York (1940-1988) was a Canadian novelist. He was also an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada.

Works of fiction

We the Wilderness

Snowman

The Musk-ox Passion

Trapper

Desireless: A Novel of New Orleans

Pimping for Jesus [unpublished]

Works of non-fiction

And Sleep in the Woods: The Story of One Man's Spiritual Quest

Awards

The Musk-ox Passion received the Mark Twain Comic Novel of the Year Award for 1978.

About the novels

Three of York's novels are set in the Arctic and two of them (Snowman and Trapper) are based on historical characters who have become part of Arctic folklore: John Hornby and Albert Johnson, the "mad trapper of Rat River." Trapper was the most commerically successful of York's novels and was reissued by Avon as a paperback in 1983. Desireless was published posthumously, in 1988.

York’s novels “come out of what he terms ‘radical disturbances’ in his life which he transforms into fiction . . . he does not consciously write for a target audience. He has, nonetheless, had great critical acclaim. His most prominent influence is obviously Faulkner, and York claims he went to Canada to avoid the draft and to transfer a ‘neo-Faulknerian vision’ onto the Arctic.”

York obtained a PhD in English literature from Tulane University in 1982, with a dissertation on Malcolm Lowry's novel Under the Volcano. The thesis argues that this novel may be properly understood as giving voice to “the post-mortem point of view.” This is an idea that also figures largely in his last two published novels, through the characters of Lazarus and Johnson (in Trapper) and through the protagonist of Desireless.

York wrote a collection of humorous short stories about the church (Pimping for Jesus), as yet unpublished.

York wrote several book and movie reviews and articles, which were published in Canadian magazines and newspapers. He also wrote a regular column titled “Let’s Talk About …” for a local newspaper in Pemberton, B.C., and later the student newspaper at University Waterloo (The Imprint). He was a member of the Writer's Union of Canada.

Conversion experience, ordination and ministry

"Rev. Tom York" (as he was known by parishioners) was an ordained minister in the United Church of Canada for 25 years. At the time of his death he was United Church chaplain for both University of Waterloo and Wilfred Laurier University, Ontario.

In the early 1960s, he left an NROTC (naval officer training) program, going AWOL, and traveled north into Canada with his wife Lynn. They lived in the woods near Bartibog Station, New Brunswick, and then later in the woods near Barrie, Ontario, as documented in the spiritual autobiography, And Sleep in the Woods. York had a religious vision and subsequently entered Emmanuel College theology seminary in Toronto, where he obtained an Master of Divinity and was ordained, under the tutelage of the Rev. Dr. Earl S. Lautenschlager. The Rev. Dr. Kenneth G. Phifer, author of The Book of Uncommon Prayer, was also influential in York’s development as a minister.

Professor Emeritus of Religion at Queen's University William C. James provides a scholarly treatment of York's spiritual experiences in the book Locations of the Sacred: Essays on Religion, Literature, and Canadian Culture. This is the most thorough scholarly treatment of York’s thought, but is restricted to his spiritual autobiography and does not address his fiction. There is, as yet, no thorough scholarly treatment of his fiction, despite the artistic merit of his fiction noted by book reviewers (e.g. the Kirkus review).

The Yorks served in the following parishes: Whitby, Ontario (circa 1964-5); Bella Bella, British Columbia (circa 1966-9); Yellowknife, Northwest Territories (circa 1970-1); and Thorncliffe Park, Toronto, Ontario (circa 1975-1980). York also served in the parishes of Pemberton and Whistler, British Columbia (circa 1984-5), and as United Church chaplain at University of Waterloo and Wilfred Laurier University (circa 1986-7).

York was at the centre of periodic controversy in the church during his career, though not intentionally. In the 1970s, he was among the first clergy in Canada to marry a gay couple, at Thorncliffe Park United Church. Eventually, the United Church of Canada became the first denomination to endorse this position. He was also the target of criticism by some for the use of sexual imagery in his novels. York’s response to that criticism was that “all literature is religious”—which is a way of saying that that sexuality has a spiritual dimension, one that he chose to explore through his novels. This theme is most evident in Trapper and Musk-ox Passion.

Trial

York returned to the United States in 1973 to face trial for failing to keep his draft board informed of his current address, and was initially convicted, but then later acquitted on appeal. An AP news article from 1973 documents the trial. York’s account of the trial and the events leading up to it appear in And Sleep in the Woods.

By going to Canada and leaving officer training in the United States, York was among the first of many young Americans in the 1960s who would cross the border to avoid military service. The number of them increased dramatically when the United States entered the Vietnam war in the late 1960s. Although a student of military history, York was a self-proclaimed pacifist. Due to the fact that he become a minister and published novelist in Canada, his trial attracted the attention of the Associated Press and the story was published in several newspapers in both the US and Canada.

Death

York died in a vehicle accident outside Mount Vernon, Illinois on Jan. 3, 1988. He had been returning from visiting his mother in Little Rock at the time.

Memorials

After his death, several Canadian writers published memorial pieces honouring York, including Ken McGoogan, Richard T. Wright, and George Payerle. Poet Susan Musgrave penned a poem titled “Desireless: Tom York (1988-1940).” At the University of Waterloo an annual “Tom York Memorial Award” for fiction was established. Several newspapers noted his passing. Some of his letters and papers have been archived at the Thomas Fischer Rare Books Library, University of Toronto.

Tom York’s gravestone, located in Little Rock, Arkansas, reads “Beloved father, son, pastor, novelist and nature mystic.” And below this is inscribed the last line of the novel Trapper, which clearly conveys a post-mortem point of view: “I am he who is within me. Who are you?”

Personal Life

Thomas Lee York was born to Harold Chester York and Alice Byrd York in Washington, D.C., Sept. 21, 1940. His lineage is from Maine and Nova Scotia on his father’s side and from Ohio and Arkansas on his mother’s side. He was raised in Little Rock, Arkansas, and attended Central High and Hall High in Little Rock. When he left the United States he became a Canadian citizen.

He married Lynn Fuller in 1961. They had four children together: Paul (b. 1968), Stephen (b. 1969), Rachel (b. 1971), and Sarah (b. 1977). They are all pictured in a photo from the Toronto Star, 1978, which accompanies an article by journalist Martin O’Malley.

York went on long canoe-trips nearly every summer, sometimes up to two months long, many of them with his sons. He contributed a story about one of the trips, called "Requiem for a River" to the hardback version of the book Wild Waters: Canoeing North American's Wilderness Rivers, by James Raffan (note that the paperback version does not contain the story) . York was an avid reader, devoted father, opera enthusiast, canoeist and outdoorsman, self-identified nature mystic, and weightlifter.

References