Trent University Mourns the Loss of Professor Emeritus David Page

Trent University is saddened to learn the death of Professor David Page, professor emeritus in the department of Ancient History & Classics. 

Prof. Page joined Trent in 1968 as an assistant professor in the department of Classical Studies. His passion for the classical world and commitment to student success led to his promotion to associate professor in 1974. Throughout his tenure, he played pivotal roles, including serving as chair of the department of Classical Studies from 1978 to 1982, principal of Lady Eaton College between 1986 and 1989, and acting principal of Traill College during 1997-1998 and 2000-2001.​ He was awarded professor emeritus status in 2007. 

In recognition of his outstanding teaching, Prof. Page was honoured with the Symons Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2003, reflecting his profound impact on students and the academic community. In 2005, he was further honoured with a prestigious provincial teaching award from the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations, one of the highest accolades for university educators in Ontario. Upon his retirement in 2007, the David Page Prize in Latin was established to commemorate his 39 years of exemplary service; the prize is awarded to the first-year student achieving the highest grade in LATN 1001H: Elementary Latin 2.​   

The University extends heartfelt sympathies to the family and friends of Dr. Page and to all who knew him at Trent.   

In Memoriam David FR Page (1942-2025)

A tribute by Professor Emeritus Ian Storey

We are sad to announce that a long-time member of our Programme, Emeritus Professor David Page, died peacefully in his sleep late on March 23, in his home city of Cambridge, England. He had returned there after his retirement from Trent in 2007, where he had taught Latin and Roman History for 39 years. He was born in Fulbourn, a village just outside Cambridge, did his undergraduate work in Ancient History at the University of Sheffield, and came to the Department of Classics at Trent in 1968. He rapidly established himself as one of Trent’s legendary teachers, combining a deep knowledge of his discipline, with great skills in teaching students (especially those new to university or to the study of the ancient world), and most importantly a genuine ability in interacting personally with his students, staff and colleagues at Trent.

David would say that he was not there to tell students what to believe, but to give them accurate and up-to-date information about a particular topic, be it large or small, and to provide the skills for them to make up their own minds. While he taught undergraduates at all levels, he took a special delight in teaching the introductory course in Roman History, for many years known as ‘Classical History 201’, and his favourite course, Latin 100. It was for teaching this course in particular that he received the Trent’s Symons Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2003 and then the OCUFA award in 2005. On his retirement a fund was established to award the David Page Prize in Latin 100 to the top student in that course each year. He once told a humorous story about when he offered an extra credit of two marks in that course, one student already had 99%, and the university computer would not accept a grade of 101%. At the other end of the academic spectrum, when some of our Honours students were starting to proceed to graduate work, he established a fourth-year classical history course on the skills and techniques required of an ancient historian. One student who went on to an M.A. at Queens reported back to David that at Queen’s this course would be offered at the second-year level in a graduate programme.

David did not publish many formal publications, but depended on his instruction in the lecture-hall and especially in the seminars to disseminate the results of his own personal research. He was very well read in the current scholarship in Roman History, frequently attended conferences and could hold his own when conversing with some of the established names in that field. He did present one clever and imaginative explanation of a peculiar incident in the life of the emperor Domitian (late 1st c. CE) to a meeting of the Classical Association of Canada (CAC). This was very

well received by those present and appeared in Celebratio, a collection of papers that marked the 30th anniversary of the Department in 1998.

He participated greatly in the life of Trent University, finding its College system especially congenial to his own personality and his manner of instruction. He was the founding senior tutor of Otonabee College in 1973, chair of Classical Studies (later Ancient History and Classics) on more than one occasion, principal of Lady Eaton College from 1986-9 (where a good photograph of David hangs proudly in the Senior Common Room), acting principal of Traill College in the late 1990s, and a member of University and College committees too numerous to list here. Outside of Trent he was an enthusiastic supporter of the Classical Association of Canada whose yearly meetings he attended whenever he could, and served a term as president of the Ontario Classical Association. He received the title of professor emeritus upon his retirement in 2007.

Most of those who knew David Page will remember most of all an outgoing personality who loved to talk with other people, not just students and colleagues, but staff members in the corridors, check-out cashiers in the shops or banks, a neighbour down the street, bus-drivers on the Trent express. During his principalship at Lady Eaton College, he especially enjoyed going over to the Dining Hall, meeting and having dinner with the students. He cared genuinely for others and their well-being and was generous in his hospitality – one graduate of Trent recalled a Departmental gathering at his home in the late 1980s of which he said, “this is what a meeting of C.S. Lewis’s Inklings must have been like”. We shall miss David’s sense of humour, wry laugh, welcoming smile, his learning, generosity and humanity. The Roman poet Terence (early 2nd c. BCE) might have been talking about him when he wrote ‘homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto’ (‘I am a human being, I consider nothing human to be foreign to me.’). Anyone who knew David Page will have come off the better for that encounter.