Bill Sarjeant passed away Monday, July 8, of liver cancer, in Saskatoon. If I find an obituary, I'll post it. These are my own thoughts, extemporaneously.

Bill was a former president of the Canadian Folk Music Society and was an active worker in many other capacities for that organization (now called the Canadian Society for Traditional Music). He was a founding member of The Prairie Higglers, a longtime folk group in Saskatoon. He was a big Yorkshireman with a big singing voice and brusque manner. He was a geologist by profession, teaching at the University of Saskatchewan, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a foremost authority on dinosaur footprints and coproliths. He was a man of parts, with many interests and avocations. Among others, he wrote fantasy novels under the pen name "Anthony Swythen". He was an authority on Sherlock Holmes, and wrote and lectured on the topic. He was a bibliophile and collector, and has donated thousands of books to university collections. I knew him mostly through his music and CFMS/CSTM, though.

I learned of Bill's diagnosis barely over a month ago, and it comes as a shock that he has succombed so quickly. I'll miss him, and I know many others will.