Helen Hubbard Wolfe Sonthoff was born in Rochester, New York, on September 11, 1916. She was educated at Smith College (AB 1937), and Radcliffe College. She taught for some years in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. before coming to the University of British Columbia in 1958 as a Teaching Assistant. Sonthoff, a teacher and scholar of Canadian Literature back in the days when Canadian literature was still struggling to establish itself as a field worthy of study, gained a tenured appointment as an Assistant Professor of English at U.B.C. in 1968. Her own writing was on the fiction and poetry of such contemporary figures as Phyllis Webb, Milton Acorn, Eli Mandel and Leonard Cohen, and from time to time, she promoted their work on the CBC as a reader and critic. Sonthoff served on numerous departmental and faculty committees, and in 1972 she was elected to a three-year term on the University Senate as a representative of the Faculty of Arts. As a member of the fledgling Women's Action Group she contributed to the first Report on the Status of Women at U.B.C. in 1973. Sonthoff was also an early supporter of aboriginal education at the post-secondary level, and worked with colleagues in Arts and Education to give special help to aboriginal students. Upon her retirement from the English Department in 1976, Sonthoff and her long-time partner, writer Jane Rule, moved permanently to Galiano Island. Sonthoff passed away in Victoria, B.C. on January 3, 2000.
From the description of Helen Sonthoff fonds. 1944-2000. (University of British Columbia Library). WorldCat record id: 607138104
