bigtony: Here's the Globe's obit:
John Grube once mentioned, quite matter-of-factly, "I'm a footnote." He always thought that the highest academic honour was to have one's work cited.
John published numerous works throughout his life. He came from a family of academics (his father, G.M.A. Grube, was an internationally recognized Plato scholar), and he carried on the family tradition in his idiosyncratic way.
Academia had too many restrictions for a mind like John's, which could not be confined in one department. He produced volumes of poetry and short stories, and wrote articles of all descriptions for various publications. He wrote books on French-Canadian nationalism, and had extensive correspondence with Quebec nationalists Jacques Ferron and François-Albert Angers.
Like the best scholars, John valued ideas and principles above all else. But he was a reluctant academic, eventually finding his niche teaching creative writing at the Ontario College of Art while being an agitator on the college's board of governors.
In later years, he was a member of the Senior Common Room at the University of Toronto's Trinity College, where he had attended university and where his father taught.
John's high regard for ideas, and his finely tuned moral compass, came from a mixture of socialist upbringing, innate frugality and religious belief.
Openly gay for decades, he became an activist and organizer for gay rights. His pen would come out of the scabbard to write letters and articles. He was part of the gay art collective JAC and produced hundreds of paintings and drawings.
John did not hold back his opinions, especially on matters of principle. Politically left-leaning to the end, he often noted in his dry way: "It's impossible to move gracefully to the right."
John accepted the challenges of living with Parkinson's disease with stubbornness and contemplation. He remained an avid cyclist for many years, realizing that he could cycle much better than he could walk, and he thought of a cane more as a stage prop than a tool.
Eventually John had to move, and his library was dismantled and donated to Trinity College for its annual book sale. "It's like a piece of installation art imitating some scholarly den, and the time has come to take it down," he said.
Every Wednesday for as long as his health allowed, he attended Trinity College's Evensong, sherry reception and high-table dinner. He always wore corduroy and tweed, playing the role of the traditional professor. "I just wear them to blend," he would say.
Peter Josselyn was John's friend.
