Peter Kane Dufault
Peter Kane Dufault was born on April 22, 1923 and grew up in Westchester County, New York.
After serving three years as a bomber pilot in World War II, he graduated from Harvard University in 1947. He was variously employed as tree surgeon, pollster, teacher and soccer coach at the Barlow School in Amenia, New York and as editor of the Catskill Daily Mail. In 1968, he was a candidate for US Congress, running on the Liberal party’s anti-Vietnam war platform.
Acclaimed author and poet, he wrote many pastoral verses on Columbia County scenery and wildlife. He also wrote many poems on political subjects including “Memorandum to the Age of Reason” an extended meditation on American Democracy and the Constitution with all its promise, perils and paradoxes. The first of his books of verse was published in 1954. Poems have appeared in many magazines, including the New Yorker, London Magazine and Poetry, and anthologies, including the 1996 Norton Anthology. He is remembered for his live recitations and was twice the Visiting Poet at the Cheltenham Festival, in England, toured Ireland as Visiting Poet with Poetry Ireland, and was a visiting critic in poetry at Williams College. He also peppered the political landscape with such phrases as “sawdust president” and “making vaudeville of the law”.
He is known locally as a fiddler, banjo-player and dance-caller with the Kitchen Kaylie Band. He was also the “Greenpeace Piper”, playing bagpipes garbed in full Scottish attire in exchange for donations to Greenpeace.
He is survived by his wife Ruth Tuoti Dufault, sister Claire Wilson of Wellesley, MA, his three sons, Scott, Mark and Ethan, nine grandchildren and four great grandchildren.
