Introduction

This collection of essays in honour of Margaret Wade Labarge (18 July 1916 - 31 August 2009) marks the passing of a remarkable scholar, but it also stands as a sentinel to the passing of a generation of noteworthy Canadian medievalists. Dr. Labarge (yes, it was honorary and a title she tended not to use, but she received three and they were certainly well merited) was part of that remarkable efflorescence of Medieval Studies that distinguished the Canadian academy in the 1970s and 1980s. The list of names reads as a Who’s Who of medievalists: Bertie Wilkinson, Michael Sheehan, Ambrose Raftis, Leonard Boyle, John Leyerle among many others. There with them, but not really part of their circle, was Margaret Wade Labarge, a married woman, without an academic appointment, a resident of Ottawa rather than Toronto. Yet she fits with them nonetheless as a leader and a leading light for Canadian Medieval Studies.