Obituary: Morgan Kenney was a ‘tremendous’ teacher of languages and other things
Hamilton Spectator: Morgan Kenney in 2011. COURTESY OF JOHN HILL
By Daniel Nolan, Contributor, Hamilton Spectator
Morgan Kenney was passionate about language — the spoken word, the written word and the foreign tongue.
The former Burlington resident — who died March 26 in England at 95 — was supervisor of languages for the Hamilton Board of Education in the 1960s and 1970s and helped create programs to teach French to elementary and high schools that were eventually used across Canada.
In addition, he was the author of 42 textbooks that sold seven million copies and was a regular contributor to a magazine for language teachers. He liked to write short stories and poetry and later set up a major poetry prize in Britain named after his first wife Petra. He also became a columnist for Britain’s poetry magazine, Poetry Now.
Kenney and Petra were active members of the Players’ Guild. They were called Mr. and Mrs. Theatre.
“The man was busy all the time,” said friend John Hill, former head of the language department at Sir Allan MacNab Secondary School who became supervisor of languages when Kenney retired in 1981. “I don’t know how he slept.”
Another friend, Jim Forrester, called Kenney “a marvellous man.”
“He had wide interests,” said Forrester, a history and geography teacher who retired as a superintendent of education in the early 1990s.
“He and Petra travelled the world. He taught teachers and students alike that life was worth living. I never saw him down. He never lost faith in life.”
Language was something that interested Kenney since he was a child.
“From early years I have been fascinated by language, by words,” Kenney told the website Winning Writers in 2003. “I can remember preteen years asking my parents to arrange elocution lessons for me; I wanted to speak well. I didn’t know the word articulate then.”
Kenney came to Hamilton to teach French at Delta Secondary School in 1950. He had an immediate impact on students, but his friend Gord Carruth — who was one of his Grade 12 students then — said years later, Kenney told him he was frightened to stand up in front of a class. He inspired Carruth to go into languages and he taught at Delta and Westmount and later became a playwright.
“He was a hell of a teacher,” said Carruth. “He was tremendous. My only regret is that I didn’t get him in Grade 13.”
Kenney grew up in Ottawa, the son of Alfred and Helen Kenney. His friend Crawford Potter said he taught English to Germans in a Kingston-area PoW camp at the end of the war. Kenney obtained his Masters of Arts in Language and Literature from the University of Toronto. Kenney also taught at Hill Park Secondary School, where he also directed school plays.
Kenney told The Spectator in 1980 he got into writing textbooks by accident. The province issued guidelines for teaching French in 1966, but there were no textbooks. He and another Hamilton teacher, Doris Kerr, produced the series Ici on Parle Francais for Grades 7 and 8. With a small team of teachers, Kenney later developed the French program and textbooks for Grades 9 through 13.
Kenney was proud the programs were picked up by others across the country and noted the high school one predated provincial guidelines.
“The program has been going since 1972 and we’ve never had a criticism,” he said. “We’ve only received beautiful letters from people who are strangers saying how much they appreciate it.”
Even though he was the language supervisor, Kenney still taught one French class a year. He stopped that in 1980 but kept one student — then mayor Jack MacDonald. He gave him French lessons two times a week.
After he retired, Kenney and his wife, who was a television copywriter, returned to her home country of England. She died on Christmas Day 1994 and he set up the Petra Kenney Memorial Poetry Prize 11 months later.
Such was the respect Kenney had it helped his friend Potter land a job. He applied in 1963 to be a language teacher with the Hamilton board and Kenney gave him a reference letter. Off he went to an interview.
“As soon as they saw his name, I had the job,” said Potter, who taught languages for 33 years at Westmount, Sherwood and Sir Allan MacNab.
Kenney is survived by his second wife Oz Cottam Moss. He was predeceased by his first wife Petra in 1994 and sister June.
Updated on Monday, May 31, 2021.