St. Michael’s and University of Toronto Professor Emeritus Gino Matteo passed away this week. A member of the SMC Class of 1959 and Director of the Alumni Association at SMC from 1966 to 1968, Prof. Matteo was heavily involved at St. Mike’s throughout his life. Below, Interim Principal Mark McGowan remembers Prof. Matteo’s legacy.
Professor Gino Matteo spent much of his life at St. Michaels College. He was in the SMC class of 5T9, and then undertook graduate work in English. He returned to the SMC Department of English, where he taught alongside one of his mentors, Marshall McLuhan. A specialist in Shakespeare, and in 1974 he published Shakespeare’s Othello: The Study and the Stage, 1604-1904, which was based on his doctoral dissertation. His interests in English literature were not restricted to the Elizabethan period, but his fascination with Nell Gwyn, longtime mistress of King Charles II, inspired him to write a stage play which earned him top honours for a playwright at the Moon Dance Festival in Boulder Colorado. Gino also was interested in film and media and was one of the directors of the Cinema Studies program, then based out of Innis College. Despite this secondment across campus, he always kept his office in Elmsley Hall. Gino and I met when I first arrived at St. Mike’s in 1991. When he discovered I lived in Whitby, he wanted to know if I had ever visited Dom’s Auto Wreckers in Oshawa—Gino, I discovered, was an antique car buff and made frequent pilgrimages there for parts for the classic cars he was rebuilding.