Faculty Café: Paul Doty and Dr. Neil Forkey on the Adirondack Life and Legacy of Paul Jamieson

What can the life and writing of one St. Lawrence professor tell us about the history, waterways, and enduring character of the Adirondacks?

At this Faculty Café, Paul Doty and Dr. Neil Forkey will present “An Old Man with a Canoe: The Adirondack Life and Legacy of Paul Jamieson,” exploring the work of Dr. Paul Fletcher Jamieson, a St. Lawrence English professor from 1929 to 1965 who became an influential Adirondack writer and wilderness advocate.

Jamieson’s edited compilation, The Adirondack Reader (1964), was the crowning achievement of his academic career, but some of his most important writing on the Adirondacks came after his retirement. Over the next 30 years, he produced seven books, including Adirondack Canoe Waters, North Flow (1975). More than a guidebook for recreationists, the work brought life and historical meaning to the region’s waterways in a manner reminiscent of Ralph Waldo Emerson and other Transcendental writers.

Doty is St. Lawrence University’s Special Collections and Archives Librarian and holds degrees in English from Keene State College and the University of Maine, as well as an M.L.S. from SUNY Albany. Forkey is the Archie F. MacAllaster and Barbara Torrey MacAllaster Professor of North Country Studies, 2024–2027, and author of Defending a Borderland: Canadian and American Environmental Activism in the St. Lawrence Valley (2026).