Lorna Toolis

Lorna Diane Toolis (October 6, 1952 – August 11, 2021) was a Canadian librarian. She was head of the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation, and Fantasy at the Toronto Public Library from 1986 to 2017. She was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction & Fantasy Association Hall of Fame in 2017.

Lorna Toolis
Born	(1952-10-06)October 6, 1952 Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Died	August 11, 2021(2021-08-11) (aged 68) Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Occupation(s)	Librarian, editor
Known for	Head of the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation, and Fantasy at the Toronto Public Library, 1986-2017

Early life

Toolis was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and raised in Transcona, the daughter of Robert Toolis and Shirley Setter Toolis. She earned a bachelor's degree in history at the University of Winnipeg, and a master's degree in library science at the University of Alberta.^[1][2]

Career

Alberta

While studying in Alberta, Toolis was a member of the Edmonton Science Fiction and Comic Arts Society,^[3] contributed to the group's cookbook, Stir Wars,^[4] and edited its newsletter, Neology.^[5][6] She was one of the early organizers of Noncon, the Edmonton-based science fiction fan convention.^[7] After earning her degree, she was head of technical services at the library of the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology.^[1]

The Spaced Out Library/Merril Collection

1986, Toolis was appointed head of the Spaced Out Library (SOL), the science fiction collection at Toronto Public Library. The collection was built around an initial donation of about 5000 items, given by writer Judith Merril.^[8] Beginning in 1987, she published SOL Rising, a bi-annual zine for the Friends of the Merril Collection,^[9] and wrote essays for it, with titles such as "Mutant Fleas and Futurian Economics: The Merril Collection Sells Its Swag" (2011) and "Mad Hatters, Scones, and Carolling à la Cthulhu at the Merril" (2011).^[5]

In 1995, Toolis moved the renamed Merril Collection to the Lillian H. Smith branch of the library.^[10][11] By the time she retired in 2017, the Merril Collection had grown to over 80,000 items, including published works, manuscripts, audiovisual materials, games, and ephemera.^[1][12] Just before her retirement, she welcomed a collection of books by Dominican authors into the collection.^[13] She was succeeded as senior department head at the Merril by Sephora Hosein.^[14][15] "Today, the Merril is a treasure, and it's in no small part thanks to Lorna and her team," noted Cory Doctorow in 2017.^[16]

Toolis was frequently mentioned in the acknowledgments of scholarly works on science fiction, and in novels and collections of short fiction.^[17][18] For one notable example, Margaret Atwood credited the Merril Collection, and Toolis by name, in the acknowledgments of The Blind Assassin (2000).^[19][20]

Other activities

Toolis was a founding member of SF Canada.^[6][21] She co-edited Tesseracts 4 (1992) with Michael Skeet;^[22][23] the collection of Canadian science fiction stories won an Aurora Award. In 2000 she spoke on a panel about popular culture at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference.^[24] In 2007, she contributed to the compilation of Visions of Mars, a collection of popular cultural images of Mars through history, assembled by the Planetary Society.^[25] In 2017, she was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction & Fantasy Association Hall of Fame.^[26]

Personal life

Toolis married Michael Skeet in 1984. She died on August 11, 2021, in Toronto, Ontario.^[21]

References

1. Skeet, Michael (2021-08-17). "Lorna Toolis (1952-2021)". Locus Online. Retrieved 2021-12-07.
2. University of Alberta (1979). University of Alberta Part Four of the Sixty-ninth Annual Convocation for the Conferring of Degrees - May 1979 - Spring Part IV - 1979. University of Alberta. p. 16 – via Internet Archive.
3. "Sci-Fi Fans Step Backwards". Edmonton Journal. 1981-08-10. p. 31. Retrieved 2021-12-07 – via Newspapers.com.
4. Nielsen, Marianne. Stir Wars - Cookbooks of the Edmonton Science Fiction and Comic Arts Society (1981). via Internet Archive
5. Carter, Sue (2021-11-17). "Lorna Toolis created a speculative fiction community with the Merril Collection". Quill and Quire. Retrieved 2021-12-07.
6. Weiss, Allan (October 30, 2021). "Lorna Toolis – A Celebration". SF Canada. Retrieved 2021-12-07.
7. Dornan, Chris (1979-08-29). "Science Fiction Meet Anything but Typical". Edmonton Journal. p. 35. Retrieved 2021-12-07 – via Newspapers.com.
8. "SFE: Toolis, Lorna". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Retrieved 2021-12-07.
9. "SOL Rising #1". The Friends of the Merril Collection. January 1987. Retrieved 2021-12-07.
10. "Merril Collection at 50: Stories from the Spaced Out Library". Toronto Public Library. Retrieved 2021-12-07.
11. Toane, Carey (8 May 2015). "Graphic Novel Month: in the Stacks at the Merril Collection". Open Book. Retrieved 2021-12-12.
12. Vint, Sherryl (2004). "The Merrill Collection". Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. 15 (1 (57)): 91–93. ISSN 0897-0521. JSTOR 43308692.
13. "Toronto Public Library receives books of Dominican writers". Dominica News Online. 2017-03-08. Retrieved 2021-12-12.
14. Ross, Brendan (14 August 2017). "New head of Toronto's special sci-fi and fantasy collection on 3 books that changed her life". CBC News. Retrieved December 11, 2021.
15. Nickle, David (2017-08-07). "Toronto's Merril Collection has a new librarian in charge". Toronto.com. Retrieved 2021-12-12.
16. Doctorow, Cory (2017-08-08). "Toronto's amazing science fiction library, the Merril Collection, has a new head librarian". Boing Boing. Retrieved 2021-12-12.
17. Bould, Mark; Vint, Sherryl (2011-02-23). The Routledge Concise History of Science Fiction. Routledge. pp. xi. ISBN 978-1-136-82041-0.
18. Vint, Sherryl (2012). Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal. Liverpool University Press. pp. ix. ISBN 978-1-84631-815-3.
19. Leroux, Jean-François; Bossière, Camille La (2004-02-18). Worlds of Wonder: Readings in Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature. University of Ottawa Press. p. 14. ISBN 978-0-7766-1745-9.
20. Atwood, Margaret (2007-12-18). The Blind Assassin. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. p. 523. ISBN 978-0-307-42817-2.
21. Lorna Toolis at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
22. Tesseracts 4. Lorna Toolis, Michael Skeet. Victoria, B.C.: Beach Holme. 1992. ISBN 0-88878-322-1. OCLC 26854784.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
23. Grant, Glenn (1993-03-20). "Canada's SF Writers Let Stories Do the Talking". The Gazette. p. 111. Retrieved 2021-12-07 – via Newspapers.com.
24. Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (2000). Program. p. 16 – via Internet Archive.
25. "Visions of Mars Credits, 2007". The Planetary Society. Retrieved 2021-12-07.
26. "Hall of Fame Inductees". Aurora Awards. Retrieved 2021-12-07.

External links

• David Nickle (2021), "In the Orbit of Lorna Toolis, 1952–2021", David Nickle; a blogpost tribute by a writer and friend of Toolis's
• "Lorna Toolis Speaks for the Sunburst Award" a short 2010 video of Toolis speaking, from YouTube