KATHERINE BARBER

Ionly met Katherine Barber once – but it just took a few seconds to realize what a live wire she was, in even the fustiest gathering. It was 1998, and she was visiting the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, where I was the writer-in-residence and people were just beginning to use email regularly.

A friend of mine had started using (and promoting) her own neologism, “eem,” for this new method of communication. I quite liked it and had used it a few times myself. Because of “beam,” it had a space-age ring: “Don’t call, just eem me”; “Okay, I’ll eem you tomorrow.” So I offered it to Katherine.

She smiled, repeated it as though trying to determine its exact aging potential, then gave me a mocking, skeptical look: “Eem … Interesting … but, no, it won’t last.” I never used “eem” again. It was sad that someone so manifestly talented and good at her job should have been laid off when Oxford shut down its Canadian publishing wing. I had always wondered what happened to her and had hoped to cross paths again.