John Bentley Mays

John Bentley Mays (June 22, 1941 – September 16, 2016) was a Canadian journalist and writer. Best known as an art and architecture columnist for ''The Globe and Mail'', he also published a novel and several non-fiction books.

Mays was born in rural Louisiana in 1941."South rises again in family meditation". ''The Globe and Mail'', October 4, 1997. Both his parents died when he was a child, his father in a car accident and his mother of cancer, and he was raised thereafter by relatives in Shreveport. He studied medieval literature and literary criticism at the University of Rochester, and moved to Toronto in 1969 to accept a teaching job at York University."Longtime critic became a cultural force". '' Edmonton Journal'', September 24, 2016. He married Margaret Cannon in 1971, and published his first novel, ''The Spiral Stair'', in 1978. He joined ''The Globe and Mail'' in 1980.

In 1994 he published ''Emerald City: Toronto Visited'', a collection of essays about Toronto architecture and history. The following year he published ''In the Jaws of the Black Dogs'', a memoir of his lifelong struggle with clinical depression. In the book, he also came out as bisexual by orientation,"Darkness Visible"
'' Books in Canada'', September 1995. although he noted that for personal and religious reasons he had chosen to remain monogamously married to his wife rather than exploring his attractions to men.

In 1997 he published ''Power in the Blood'', a memoir about exploring his family history after the death of his aunt Vandalia in 1990. The book was shortlisted for that year's Viacom Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction. The following year he left ''The Globe and Mail'' to become a general arts and culture journalist for the ''National Post'', remaining with that paper until 2001.

In 2002 he published ''Arrivals: Stories from the History of Ontario'', a book about Ontario history."A place to stand, a place to grow ...: Writer sets out to prove Ontario's history is not boring". '' Edmonton Journal'', September 1, 2002. The book won the Joseph Brant Award from the Ontario Historical Society. He was a freelance writer for a variety of publications in this era, until rejoining ''The Globe and Mail'' in 2008 as an architecture columnist. Over the course of his career in journalism, he won awards from both the National Newspaper Awards and the National Magazine Awards. He also taught courses and gave guest lectures on architecture at OCAD University and the University of Toronto.

Mays died of a heart attack on September 16, 2016 in Toronto, just two weeks after having completed writing his second novel.

Books

*''The Spiral Stair'' (1978)
*''Emerald City: Toronto Visited'' (1994)
*''In the Jaws of the Black Dogs: A Memoir of Depression'' (1995)
*''Power in the Blood: Land, Memory and a Southern Family'' (1997)
*''Arrivals: Stories from the History of Ontario'' (2002)
*''The Occidental Hotel'' (2020) ublished posthumously

References

External link

* (archived)

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mays, John Bentley
1941 births
2016 deaths
20th-century Canadian novelists
Canadian male novelists
Canadian newspaper journalists
Canadian male journalists
Canadian magazine journalists
Canadian columnists
Canadian art critics
Canadian memoirists
Canadian architecture writers
Canadian LGBT writers
Bisexual writers
Bisexual men
The Globe and Mail people
National Post people
American emigrants to Canada
People from Shreveport, Louisiana
Writers from Toronto
Writers from Louisiana
20th-century Canadian male writers
LGBT people from Louisiana
Bisexual academics