William Whitehead (Canadian writer)

Whitehead was born in Hamilton, Ontario, to Marjorie and Berkeley Kyle Whitehead.[3] His parents had moved there from Saskatchewan, and the family moved back to Regina when Whitehead was a child.[3] His parents subsequently divorced due to his father's epilepsy-related inability to maintain stable employment;[3] Whitehead did not see his father again until his late teens.[3]

His initial career goal was to become an entomologist — by age 12 he was already a member of the Saskatchewan Natural History Society — but he also had a passion for theatre.[3] He studied biology and theatre arts at the University of Saskatchewan, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1953 and a Master of Arts degree in 1955, but decided against pursuing work as a biologist because he found it depended too strongly on having to kill animals.[3]

He moved to Ontario in 1957 to become an actor, having several small roles with the Stratford Festival while serving as a propmaster and stage manager.[3] He met Findley, at the time also a Stratford Festival actor, in 1962, with their lifelong relationship beginning when Findley appeared in a CBC Television production of Jules Feiffer's play Crawling Arnold and Whitehead invited him over to watch it because Findley didn't own a television set.[3]

When Findley left the theatre to concentrate on writing fiction, Whitehead simultaneously took a job writing science documentaries for the CBC Radio documentary series The Learning Stage.[3] He remained an award-winning writer of radio and television documentaries, including over 100 episodes of the CBC Television series The Nature of Things and many episodes of the CBC Radio series Ideas.[1]

He also co-wrote several works with Findley, including the television documentaries Dieppe 1942 and The National Dream: Building the Impossible Railway.[3]

Following Findley's death in 2002, Whitehead compiled and edited the posthumous collection Journeyman: Travels of a Writer.[3] In March 2004, approximately two years after Findley's death, Whitehead donated a collection of Findley's theatre memorabilia to the University of Guelph.[4] He subsequently began a new relationship, with Trevor Green.[3]

In September 2012, his memoir Words to Live By was published by Cormorant Books.[5] The book was a shortlisted nominee for the Stephen Leacock Award in 2013.[6]

In 2014 he served on the jury of the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBT writers, selecting Tamai Kobayashi as that year's winner.[7]

He died at his home in Toronto on February 1, 2018, having earlier been diagnosed with lung cancer.[3]

• Timothy Findley and William Whitehead fonds (R4441) at Library and Archives Canada