Born: March 28, 1931, Plainfield, New Jersey, United States
Died: November 27, 2007, Galiano Island, Canada
Education: Mills College
Buried: Galiano Island Cemetery, Galiano Island, Capital Regional District, British Columbia, Canada
Buried alongside: Helen Sonthoff
Find A Grave Memorial# 23188687
Movies: Desert Hearts
Parents: Arthur Richards Rule, Carlotta Jane
Jane Vance Rule, CM, OBC was a Canadian writer of lesbian-themed novels and non-fiction. Rule studied at Mills College in California. She graduated in 1952, moved to England for a short while and entered in a relationship with critic John Hulcoop. She taught at Concord Academy in Massachusetts where she met Helen Sonthoff and fell in love with her. Rule moved with Hulcoop to work at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in 1956, but Sonthoff visited her and they began to live together until Sonthoff's death in 2000. Rule died in 2007 at her home on Galiano Island due to complications from liver cancer, refusing any treatment that would take her from the island, opting instead for the care and support that could be provided by her niece, her partner, her many Galiano friends and neighbors. The ashes of Jane Vance Rule were interred in the Galiano Island Cemetery next to those of her beloved Helen. In 1964, Rule published Desert of the Heart: the novel featured two women who fall in love with each other; Donna Deitch (1985) later made it into a movie, which quickly became a lesbian classic.
Together from 1954 to 2000: 46 years.
Helen Hubbard Wolfe Sonthoff (September 11, 1916 - January 3, 2000)
Jane Vance Rule (March 28, 1931 – November 27, 2007)
Days of Love: Celebrating LGBT History One Story at a Time
ISBN-13: 978-1500563325 (CreateSpace-Assigned)
ISBN-10: 1500563323
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School: Mills College (5000 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland, CA 94613) is a liberal arts and sciences college located in the San Francisco Bay Area. Mills was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California. The school was relocated to Oakland, California, in 1871, and became the first women's college west of the Rockies. Designed in 1869 by S. C. Bugbee & Son, Mills Hall became the College's new home when it moved from Benicia to Oakland in 1871 (National Register of Historic Places: 71000132, 1971). Mills Hall is "a long, four-story building with a high central observatory. The mansarded structure, which provided homes for faculty and students as well as classrooms and dining halls, long was considered the most beautiful educational building in the state". Notable queer alumni and faculty: Jane Rule (1931–2007); John Cage (1912–1992).
Queer Places, Vol. 1.1: Retracing the Steps of LGBTQ people around the World
ISBN-13: 978-1532901904 (CreateSpace-Assigned)
ISBN-10: 1532901909
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Cemetery: Jane Rule died at the age of 76 on November 28, 2007 at her home on Galiano Island due to complications from liver cancer, refusing any treatment that would take her from the island, opting instead for the care and support that could be provided by her niece, her partner, her many Galiano friends and neighbours. The ashes of Jane Vance Rule were interred in the Galiano Island Cemetery next to those of her beloved Helen Hubbard Wolfe Sonthoff.
Address: Galiano Island, BC V0N 1P0, Canada (48.92364, -123.44147)
Place
Unobviously located near the Mt. Galiano trailhead at the island’s south end, the atmospheric graveyard is set in a pretty waterfront wood overlooking Georgeson Bay, where seals lollop about in the shallows of Collinson Reef. It’s a serene location, where the silence is broken only by unobtrusive wind chimes, rustling branches or the occasional seal bark. The graves here differ greatly, from simple burial mounds marked by humble homemade tributes to the more traditional and decorative, many bearing personal effects laid down by family and friends. Like any cemetery it offers an intimate, moving and fascinating look into the past of the community it serves, so should be considered a must-see.
Life
Who: Jane Vance Rule, CM, OBC (March 28, 1931 – November 27, 2007) and Helen Hubbard Wolfe Sonthoff (September 11, 1916 – January 3, 2000)
Jane Rule was a Canadian writer of lesbian-themed novels and non-fiction. Rule studied at Mills College in California. She graduated in 1952, moved to England for a short while and entered in a relationship with critic John Hulcoop. She taught at Concord Academy in Massachusetts where she met Helen Sonthoff and fell in love with her. Rule moved with Hulcoop to work at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1956, but Sonthoff visited her and they began to live together. Rule and Sonthoff lived together until Sonthoff’s death in 2000. Rule surprised some in the gay community by declaring herself against gay marriage, writing, "To be forced back into the heterosexual cage of coupledom is not a step forward but a step back into state-imposed definitions of relationship. With all that we have learned, we should be helping our heterosexual brothers and sisters out of their state-defined prisons, not volunteering to join them there."
Queer Places, Vol. 3.2: Retracing the Steps of LGBTQ people around the World
ISBN-13: 978-1544068435 (CreateSpace-Assigned)
ISBN-10: 1544068433
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