How best to honour the legacy of a life-long teacher and critical thinker? This was the decision Cara Waterfall, a poet and mentor, had to make after the death of her father, Donald E. Waterfall (1943–2021). The elder Waterfall was an alumnus of and, later, sessional instructor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. In 2024, Cara found her answer: a scholarship fund.
Donald Waterfall had earned his bachelor’s degree in Philosophy at U of T before completing his PhD at Princeton. When he returned to Toronto as a sessional, he taught ethics and logic in a way that encouraged students to examine not only their conclusions but also the assumptions that had brought them there. For Waterfall, his daughter says, learning “was never static—it was inquiry in motion.” As a result, his intellectual life extended beyond the classroom into a wide range of philosophical traditions, guided by his belief that ideas flourish when language remains porous, curious, and nuanced.
Aiming to continue that lineage of inquiry, the younger Waterfall established the Donald E. Waterfall (DEW) Scholarship. Rooted in the shared territory between philosophy and poetry, and thereby combining the domains of father and daughter, the initiative provides financial support, a year-long mentorship, publication opportunities, and guidance in developing a sustainable creative poetic practice.
Open to emerging poets around the world writing primarily in English, the scholarship foregrounds clarity of thought, ethical attention, and the courage to interrogate inherited narratives. It reflects Waterfall senior’s conviction that education should empower individuals to ask better questions and that education thrives when rooted in dialogue, openness, and curiosity.
At the scholarship’s core lie questions that shaped Waterfall’s teaching, which he grounded in a Wittgensteinian belief that the limits of our language become the limits of our world. What does it mean to search for meaning in how we use language, not just in what we say? How does language open—or narrow—the worlds we think we inhabit? And what futures become possible when we question the rules we’ve unconsciously agreed to play by?
The Nigerian poet and educator Isaiah Adepoju became the scholarship’s inaugural recipient for 2025-2026. His work draws from African futurism and Yoruba cosmology to explore how myth, language, and collective memory shape identity and possibility. Adepoju approaches poetry as inquiry—testing boundaries, reframing assumptions, and treating the imagination as a form of philosophical investigation. “This mentorship has become an ongoing collaboration between an older and a younger poet,” says Adepoju; “I feel supported to imagine new possibilities for my work and community.”
Adepoju’s work—generative, connective, transformative—resonates with the values that defined Donald Waterfall’s teaching: that language is not merely a vehicle for thought but a way of thinking. And that imagination, when nurtured, becomes a form of intellectual courage.
We cannot think of a better way to honour a cherished father, teacher, and philosopher.
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