Dr. Margot (Margaret) King

February 15, 2018

KING, Margot (Margaret Helen Hoeschen Bujila King – 1934-2018) died peacefully surrounded by her loving family at Kensington Hospice in Toronto on February 15, 2018, aged 84. Margot was born in Winnipeg to Bernadine Hoeschen Bujila (Saskatoon) and Theodore de Vasila Bujila (Kishinev, Bessarabia), and raised by her grandparents, Margaret and Bernard Hoeschen, in Saskatoon. She earned a B.A. from the University of Saskatchewan, a M.L.S. from University of Western Ontario, an M.A. from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. from the University of California – Berkeley. Margot was an esteemed mediaevalist and professor of English and Comparative Literature who, as the founder of Peregrina Publishing Company, discovered, translated, and popularized the lives of many previously unknown mediaeval women. Margot worked for many years as the Librarian at St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan. She was a frequent, generous, and loving host who gathered colleagues, friends, and family over innumerable meals to interrogate life in its complexity. A cradle Catholic who gained solace from the 12 Steps and a wide range of religious traditions, Margot was a great lover of coffee and cigarettes, long solitary road trips, the Benedictine Rule, woodcuts, incunabula, desktop publishing, spy novels, Holocaust movies, jazz, klezmer, Mozart, and Puccini. Margot is survived by her children, Sarah (Martin), Bernard (Emily), and David, her grandchildren, James, Megan, Miriam, and Caroline, her God-children, Isolde Prince, Donald Ward (Colleen Fitzgerald), and Brigid Ward (James Ainsworth), her former husband Michael (Gina), and her treasured dog, Mary Louise, and cat, Augustus Oliver. She was predeceased by her parents, grandparents, her beloved aunt, Margot McCallum (Auntie Mung), and her life-companion dog, Fletcher. May she find comfort and peace in the eternal Communitas Mirabilis. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Kensington Hospice (https://www.kensingtonhealth.org/Donations/In-Memory-Donation.aspx) in the name of Margot King or to support the conservation of rare books in the library of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. (http://www.pims.ca/).