Comments by Sam Boskey

Former student

When Sam Noumoff retired from McGill,  there was a celebration held for him at Thompson House. I was what disappointed; while much was said about Sam's contribution to McGill's political life and his contributions to social justice and labour relations issues, hardly anything was said about his role as a teacher.   I suggest (an expression of Sam's !) that even if Sam had done nothing more than teach, he warranted being remembered and honored.

I was a student of Sam's shortly after he came to McGill - it was 46 years ago. I can stil rmeember the first day of class. As soon as he started talking, the students looked at each other with eyes as big as saucers: Sam's extensive and precise vocabulary - as Flaubert said, always the right word in the right place - and his masterful delivery,- a well timed dramatically-tuned stage performance - were riveting. Then he repeated it all over again in the next paragraph and beyond.  

We all became aware that we were in the presence,  not only of a scholar - Sam seemd to know all about eveything - but of a wise man and a dedicated teacher. Sam could entertain, Sam could be funny, Sam could be sarcastic (though never at a student's expense). And he was always intent on helping the students, socratic method at the tip of his fingers,  to open up and expand their understanding of ideas, concepts, contradictions and beauty of well-crafted ideas.

The course, PoliSci 331, Political Philosophy was a survey not only of the history of western political thought, from the early Greeks till the present, but also explored some Arabic thinkers ( Ibn Khaldun comes to mind) and Asian philosophers. We had to write extensive term papers involving some non-western philosophers.

And we realised right away that the bar was high; Sam's demonstration of intellectual competence meant that we could not get away with superficial work. I don't think I have ever worked as hard, applied myself as rigorously to a paper as in his class.

His final exam wass unforgettable: there were three questions: i) trace the history of one of the 3 traditions we had studied, ii) compare the treatment of a major concept in each of the three traditions, and iii) decribe your own political philosophy making reference to what you have learned this year.

The exam started at noon and had no finishing time. We wrote for 4,5,6, hours.,. and then some students tried to organise a work stoppage: "You can tell with 6 hours of writing what we know and what we don't!"  But Sam was adamant. So on we went. I finished at about 9:30 and from then on, those who finished hung around to wait for the stragglers. The last student finished around 10:30 pm.

What was remarkable was not that we survived that long, but that so many students had actually learned so much that they could continue writing for that long a time. No other teacher I have had could exact such diligence from his students.  I saw this demonstrated (from a distance) through a group of devoted masters students who worked  intensely with Sam - this was during the Vietnam War - studying Vietnamese thinkers and examining the role of Chinese intellectuals during the period after 1949, through the Great Leap Forward and before and during the Cultural Revolution. How many schools in North America could offer such a learning experiuence,

I kept in touch with Sam after I graduated;  he accepted to be part of a panel I had organised at John Abbott College in Ste. Anne de Bellevue.  On the day of the presentation, there was a spontaneous student protest against a new government regulation and many students held and impromptu teach-in in the hall of a college building (and thus no-one showed up to hear Sam). Sam stayed for hours listening to the student speakers with enjoyment.

When I returned to Law School some years later, I was honored that Sam wrote me a letter of reference. Sensing the political atmosphere of the Law Faculty of that era, I was careful to also get another reference from the Dean of another Faculty (hopefully not the smae one referred to just now by Professor Naylor).

After I had been elected City Councillor in Montreal, Sam would periodically invite me to meet travelling academics who visited the Centre for Devekoping Area Studies (CDAS) if they had an interest in municipal politics back home. This provided for some interesting experiences, especially when these travelling scholars were as interested in picking my brain about local jazz clubs as they were in the state of local democracy.

I didn't see Sam for fair number of years, though I thought about him often. So when I saw that he would be taking part in a panel one weekend afternoon, I went to see him. It was a cold grey day in Chinatown and Sam was talking about the impact of the Chinese in Cuba, for me a rather esoteric topic, but one that Sam knew thoroughly!

In chatting afterwards, Sam, always the teacher, invited me to join an e-mail list-serv of progressive academics (and hangers-on) who  re-posted various articles from all over the word and often commented on them. I am thoroughly thankful to him because this listserv has become a daily part of my life for years.

And Sam was always the teacher. If I were to post an article about current debates inside South African trade unions, a subject I was following, four days later Sam would send me a packet of correspondence: he would have forwarded the article to a comrade in South Africa and the two of them would have exchanged remarks back and forth; Sam would then send me the assembled comments to make sure that I was not exposed to only one or two points of view!

Sam last posting to the list was on July 27. I didn't know this at the time because I was travelling. But when I reutrned in the fall, I was struck by Sam's on-line absence. When I learned that he was in the hospital, I started visiting him there. It must have been really sad for him, with his incompmparable control over words, to have to struggle, not to find ideas, but to struggle to find the right words, albeit simple ones. Yet he continued to  be (often) in good humour, to be curious, even though he was no longer on the computer, was no longer reading or listening to the news.

He had not seen Francesca for several months and was missing her intensely. Then one day, he was happy because friends had brought Francesca to visit him. Shortly afterwards, she died; Sam would mention over and over again how much of a blow her death was to him.

While he guiltily admitted he was not doing any exercise, he repeatedly insisted that he wanted to get out of the hospital. And, as it happenned, he got his wish before too long.