Zakuta, Leo

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 d. 2008

Sociology (1952-1985)

Personal Reflections In Memorium: Leo Zakuta

Before he died of mesothelioma in October 2008, Leo Zakuta, professor emeritus of sociology at U of T, began to gather together and organize his collection of memories, tributes to friends, family notes, and letters (published and unpublished) to various media organs. (He was a meticulous personal archivist, even writing his own death notice and composing a statement to be read at his memorial.) His widow, Annette, has put these together in a book:
Leo Zakuta: Reminiscences, Rants, and Raves.
T oronto: Iguana Books 2012

Leo Zakuta was born in 1925 of parents who had come to Canada in the 1920s from a shtetl in Svislocz in Russia. He grew up in the intellectual Jewish community of Montreal, where he met Annette. He studied at McGill and took his doctorate from the University of Chicago, writing his doctoral thesis on the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) in Ontario. He came to U of T in 1952 as a one-year fill-in and stayed for 33 years. The appointment was to the Department of Political Economy; the Sociology Department was yet to be formed. He loved teaching, embraced undergraduate courses, and insisted on marking all his essays, refusing teaching assistants. He served two terms as associate dean of graduate studies from 1972-1980.

Leo was a forthright and fearless defender of freedom of speech, and a critic of political correctness and quotas in pursuit of diversity within universities. He was outspoken on a range of societal issues including race relations and marriage. His clear and pointed letters, spiced with irony and sometimes sarcasm, make for thought- provoking reading. He was a fine writer of tributes and a “dab hand” at ditties on his friends and acquaintances. His passion for tennis as a participant, and other sports as a spectator, became a mainstay (some said an obsession) of his retirement years.
The tributes to Leo, at his memorial service, and later, which are also included in the book, demonstrate that he was warm, generous and very witty, steely in defending the values that he believed should sustain the university, and society at large.
Submitted by Christine and John Furedy

Quoted, with kind permission off the author, from: Zakuta, Annette.Leo Zakuta: Reminiscences, Rants and Raves. Toronto: Iquana Books, 2013.