Originally published in the Globe and Mail.

Roy I. Wolfe, Professor of Geography Emeritus, York University, died on November 15, 2014, surrounded by his family. He was born Israel Wolbromski in Staszow, Poland, on November 19, 1917, and came to Canada via Germany in 1922.
He was predeceased by his parents Wolf and Ethel (née Starkman), by Rosemary (née Schawlow) his devoted wife of 55 years, and by his daughter Cynthia.
Brother of Raymond (Ursula) and Eleanor (Murray Enkin). Proud and loving father of Robert David (Jacalyn Duffin), Richard (Kristine Anderson), Judy (Marc Glassman) and Mitzi (Eyal Zohar); grandfather of Joshua (Jennifer Macleod), Jessica (Daniel Goldbloom), Rachael, Daniel, Emily and Zachary; and great-grandfather of Tycho and Maxwell.
Roy Wolfe’s education was interrupted by the Depression and the Second World War. He received a BA in Biology from McMaster University, in 1940, and a MA in biology, in 1947, from the University of Toronto after serving overseas with the army medical corps. During the war the RCMP blocked his promotion from the ranks to officer because he had belonged to a communist organization in the 1930’s.
He listened to Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven and Mahler in his head all his life, and he was singing Gilbert and Sullivan songs until the end, despite having been profoundly deaf since June 29, 1947. Known as Izzy to his family, he spoke Yiddish, English, French and German, and could lip read in all of them, sometimes even distinguishing regional accents in English. He recalled Shakespeare sonnets and parodies of romantic poems from memory with equal delight, and calculated logarithms in his head for recreation. He was an astute film critic, partly because he depended on stories being told visually. He liked people who smiled, especially pretty girls, and anyone who was willing to engage in a good argument, about anything. He was proud of his invitations from C.A. Doxiadis to the Delos Symposiums in the 1960’s, where he could argue with such twentieth-century intellectual giants as Margaret Mead, Buckminster Fuller and Arnold Toynbee.
In 1956, while working as a planner in the Department of Highways of Ontario (DHO), Roy completed his University of Toronto PhD in geography on summer cottages in the province. His numerous scholarly publications on vacation travel founded the new sub-field of recreation geography; he also made significant contributions to the literature on transportation and planning. He left the DHO in 1967 to accept an appointment at York University, a belated return to his professional beginnings as a high school science teacher, in Fort Frances, in the early 1940’s. At York he lectured to large classes and ran graduate seminars where a student would take notes for him so that he could follow the discussion. He loved teaching, and although he could be formidably demanding (often covering term papers with blunt comments in red ink), his students loved him- he won an OCUFA teaching award in 1981, cited as ‘the only prof who listens.’ During his career, he also held numerous visiting appointments including at the University of Washington, St Mary’s University, and Scarborough College of the U of T. After leaving DHO he was also active as a planning consultant, participating in nearly two dozen tourism-related projects for governments in Canada, the United States and the UK. He had two pieces of advice for planners, which exemplified his approach to life and to politics as well as his work: first, leave people alone; second, you can’t leave people alone. Roy Wolfe retired from York in 1983 but remained an active member of the Rosedale and Bayview Village tennis clubs.
He had been an early user of mainframe computers for data analysis at the DHO, but he was always a skeptic of the telephone, especially long distance calls. Nevertheless, at 78, he got a Mac. The internet revolutionized his life by increasing his contact with his family and friends, offering an infinite outlet for his insatiable curiosity, and introducing him to Slate and the Onion.
He was fiercely independent, indeed he did many things fiercely, but was cracking jokes until the end, always reminding us that it is better to be lucky than smart. He was both.
His family is eternally grateful for the warm care of the outstanding staff at Kensington Gardens, where he had lived for ten years, and for the love and kindness of his personal caregivers.
Donations may be made to Kensington Gardens (https://www.kensingtonhealth.org/Donate-now.aspx), or to the R.I. Wolfe Scholarship fund at York University.
Memorial to be held Saturday, December 13 in Toronto. Contact the family for details.