[1] The couple spent some time living in Manitoba, where Clara taught university courses to military servicemen in Dauphin, before returning to Ontario where she worked at Western's library while completing her master's degree.
[1] She decided to study Canadian authors for her thesis, an idea so radical at the time that William Arthur Deacon, the books editor for The Globe and Mail, contacted her to offer his personal support.
[1] Her academic supervisor, Northrop Frye, supported her interest in Canadian literature and encouraged her to publish her thesis on Jameson.
[4] Her published work during her career at York included an essay on Moodie and Traill for the anthology The Clear Spirit;[5] Ryerson of Upper Canada, a biography of Egerton Ryerson;[6] The Manawaka World of Margaret Laurence, a critical study of Laurence's Manawaka sequence of novels;[7] contributions to the omnibus Literary History of Canada;[8] Love and Work Enough: The Life of Anna Jameson;[9] and William Arthur Deacon: A Canadian Literary Life, a biography of Deacon, coauthored with colleague John Lennox, which was a shortlisted finalist for the Toronto Book Awards in 1983.
[10] Thomas retired from full-time teaching in 1984, but remained with York as a professor emeritus and a research fellow in Canadian studies.