David Arthur Watmough (August
17, 1926 - August 4, 2017) was a Canadian playwright, short story writer and novelist. His partner of 58 years was Floyd St. Clair, one of BC's giants of the gay liberation movement.Partner Floyd St. Clair
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David Arthur Watmough (August
17, 1926 - August 4, 2017) was a Canadian playwright, short story writer and novelist. His partner of 58 years was Floyd St. Clair, one of BC's giants of the gay liberation movement.
Watmaugh was born in London, England, and attended King's College London. He has worked as a reporter (the Cornish Guardian, a 'Talks Producer' (BBC Third Programme) and an editor (Ace Books). He immigrated to Canada in 1960, to Kitsilano in Vancouver, British Columbia. where he lived for 40 years with his partner, ex-Californian Floyd St. Clair, a retired University of British Columbia French professor and opera critic. He became a Canadian citizen in 1967. Watmough moved to Tsawwassen, near Vancouver, in 2004.
In 2008 he published his autobiography, "Myself Through Others: Memoirs". "I've been very cherished by having Floyd's love poured over me," said Watmough. "He's the greatest thing that ever happened to me."
"What an amazing person," said Little Sister's Bookstore manager Janine Fuller, who knew St Clair for many years. "I'm lucky to have known him and had him in my life." She said the couple's dinner parties were "legendary." The gay community owes a debt of gratitude to the path that St Clair, Watmough and friends such as author Jane Rule and her partner Helen Sonthoff blazed, said Fuller. "They were all out together at the same time. This was really important to the history of all our lives. They were pioneers."
Floyd St. Clair met Watmough in 1951 at a Wed night social at St George's Anglican Church in Paris. Watmough was 25 years old and St Clair was 21, studying in Paris on a French government scholarship. Together, they proudly stepped out of the closet and slammed the door shut behind them in the late 1950s. While they did encounter some homophobia at the time, Watmough said it wasn't as much as some might think. "All the world loves a lover," he said. "We were happy in our relationship. It was a strength. It was an armour." "For David and Floyd, a closet was a place to hang their guests' coats. They were never secretive, and never ghettoized, either," playwright and screenwriter Michael Mercer once observed.
Floyd St. Clair and David Watmough in Paris.
David Watmough (right) and partner Floyd St. Clair, 1997. Photo by Barry Peterson & Blaise Enright.
Floyd and David at home
Watmough followed Floyd to America and settled with him in San Francisco. Around 1960, while on assignment for the San Francisco Examiner, Watmough fell in love with Vancouver. In 1963, he and Floyd moved there permanently. Floyd became a beloved professor of French at the University of British Columbia and David continued to freelance, notably as arts and theatre critic at the Vancouver Sun (1964-67) and as host of Talking About Books and Artslib on CBC television, while beginning to work on the fictional project that would consume most of his writing career: the chronicles of Davey Bryant. Bryant is Watmough's fictional alter ego, a character whose life often closely resembles Watmough's but should never be confused with it. He first appears in Ashes for Easter and Other Monodramas (1972), stories written to be performed as one-man plays, and is last encountered in the novel The Moor Is Dark Beneath the Moon (2002). Over the years Bryant becomes a kind of gay everyman as he navigates the rocky terrain of the late 20th century.
Little Sister's Bookstore co-owner Jim Deva compared Watmough and St Clair to 20th century writer couple Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas. "It was something beyond marriage," he said. "It was a meeting of souls. "I don't think David could have accomplished what he did without Floyd," Deva continued, describing Watmough as a pivotal author in both the gay and Canadian context.
The couple lived in Kitsilano for more than 40 years before purchasing a new residence in the Boundary Bay area of Tsawwassen in 2004. In Vancouver, David and Floyd formed the gravitational centre of a remarkable group of people-musicians, writers, painters, actors, academics, and the folks next door-who enjoyed their hospitality (Floyd's cooking was legendary) and the intellectual interplay. No one who was a summer guest will ever forget dinner beneath the grape arbour in the back garden on West First in Kitsilano, as the dusk accumulated and the conversation ranged.
Watmough was a passionate conversationalist who loved nothing better than a good argument. He liked to joke that he moved directly from his mother's embrace to Floyd's and it's true that he was in some ways a perpetual boy. Regardless, his devotion to his lover was unwavering as was Floyd's fierce protection of him and of his writing. Floyd's death in January 2009 devastated Watmough.
By 2013 he moved into Crofton Manor (a.k.a. "the Hive"), where he spent his final years and made many friends. Gone now was the curmudgeonly persona he had so assiduously affected, replaced by a mild- mannered, soft-spoken, kindly uncle.
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