Philosophy at the University of Waterloo mourns the loss of Jim Van Evra
Former Waterloo Philosophy professor Jim Van Evra died in November 2025. He was 87.
Born in Chicago in 1938, Prof. Van Evra completed his undergraduate degree at Valparaiso University in Indiana before going on to earn his PhD at Michigan State University. In 1965, he joined the very recently established Philosophy Department at the University of Waterloo.
Prof. Van Evra’s primary philosophical interests were in the history of and development of logic and the work of C.S. Peirce. But his philosophical interests were wide-ranging: one of his most cited works is “On death as a limit,” a moving and essay that combines characteristic logical rigour with keen psychological insights to explore just what death means to us.
Prof, Van Evra taught at Waterloo for 41 years, retiring in 2006. He was the original source of a long running source of laughs in the philosophy department. Around the time the University got a huge donation for the Institute for Nanotechnology, he proposed a Waterloo Institute for Nanophilosophy. The idea was that the institute would specialize in miniaturized versions of big philosophical questions --- e.g., instead of "do animals have rights?" (hard question!) ask "do animals have lefts?" (quite a bit easier). Eventually WINP T-shirts and mugs became a fundraiser for the Philosophy Department, though it never seemed to match the level of fundraising appeal of Nanotech. He was an early adopter of online education, teaching intermediate logic—a notoriously challenging course!—online and corresponding with students via email years before that became common practice.
Prof. Van Evra worked on challenging and rigorous questions at a time when the discipline of philosophy was particularly inclined to be hard-nosed and combative, but this was not his approach. He was an excellent and supportive colleague and mentor to junior faculty members. Above all, former students and colleagues remember him as kind, generous, and encouraging; he brought out the best in his students and made them feel welcome and valued in a sometimes unwelcoming discipline.