Born in England in 1941, and educated at Downing College, Cambridge, Robert Fothergill came to Canada in 1963 to pursue graduate work at McMaster University and the University of Toronto. His PhD dissertation was published as Private Chronicles: a Study of English Diaries by Oxford University Press in 1974. After teaching for many years in the English Department of Atkinson College at York University, he joined the Department of Theatre in the Faculty of Fine Arts in 1994, serving as Chair for five years. An early play, Something To Do, won a prize in a one-act play competition at U of T in 1965, but for a number of years he was more involved in film, founding the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre in 1967, with Lorne Michaels and David Cronenberg, and making the controversial TV news simulation Countdown Canada in 1970. Peripheral involvement in theatre over the years has included old geezer roles in Theatre@York productions, as well as three recent visits to India to direct Canadian plays with students at the Universities of Baroda and Jaipur. He was reluctantly retired from York in 2006, but continues to teach there as though nothing had happened. He is married with two grown sons, and lives in Toronto.