Jane (J.) Teresa Holmes, an associate professor in the Anthropology Department in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, died Nov. 18, at the age of 68.

J. Teresa Holmes was a respected academic, researcher and dedicated educator. She will be remembered for her warmth, generosity and commitment to teaching and learning.

She earned her PhD from the University of Virginia. Her research interests included East African colonial history, kinship and society, her professional life-long passion. Holmes also published field and archival research on tourism in Belize, helping to further develop an anthropology of tourism in the Caribbean. She was also a respected graduate supervisor who trained many doctoral and masters students and many of her former students considered her to be an esteemed mentor.

Holmes used her life-long passion for knitting and crossword puzzles to help meet her many recent health challenges. She met those challenges with courage and without complaint. She was brave and strong in the crucial ways that matter and was a loving inspiration to her family.

She was the beloved daughter of the late Very Rev. Urban Tigner Holmes III. She is survived by her loving husband Kenneth Little and son William Tigner Holmes Little (Stephanie), her adored mother Jane Neighbours Holmes and sister Janet Cooper (Brown) both of Sewanee, Tennessee, and brothers Thom (Janae) of Atlanta, Georgia, and Allan (Kris) of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She was a beloved daughter-in-law, sister-in-law, and aunt and will be dearly missed by the Little Family.

In keeping with her wishes there will be a celebration of life service at St. Martin-in-the-Fields on the corner of Glenlake and Indian Grove (Keele subway station) on Dec. 3 at 2 p.m., a light reception will follow and will take place in the parish hall. A private interment will be held in Sewanee, Tennessee, at a later date.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations should be made to the Kidney Foundation of Canada. 

A link to Holmes’s obituary in The Star is here.

(Originally published in YFile, York University’s Newsletter)