In 2010, I was invited to deliver the Whyte Lecture by the Faculty of Information Technology and the university library of Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. The phrase ‘‘peace, order and good government,’’ common to the definition of federal powers in both the Australian and the Canadian constitutions, has defined the relationship of the Crown and the citizen for more than five centuries. Based on my four decades of experience as head of government archives, the archival record is one of the vital foundations of this governance.

I wrote this article for a special issue of ARCHIVARIA honouring Dr. W. Kaye Lamb. It was awarded the first W. Kaye Lamb Prize by the Association of Canadian Archivists for the best article published that year in ARCHIVARIA. The development of the Public Archives of Canada and its active role in encouraging research, teaching and public knowledge of Canadian history was the deliberate result of early federal cultural policy. With the gradual professionalization of history as a discipline in the universities, faculty and students found ready welcome at the Archives. Scientific historiography, firmly based on the original documentary sources being gathered by the Archives was understood to be essential to the cohesion of the new

This paper was presented at a special meeting of the Canadian Historical Association held in Ottawa on June 5th, 1972 to mark the centennial of the Public Archives of Canada. This is an early and much abridged version of my Masters thesis of the same title presented to Queen’s University in November, 1973.

This analysis of the state of archives in Canada was commissioned by the Canada Council, subsequently the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, following the assertion by Dr. T.H.B. Symons, C.C. in his influential report on Canadian studies in our universities that “Canadian archives are the foundation of Canadian studies”. Based on a detailed statistical analysis and wide consultations, the Consultative Group highlighted the growth of archives through the 1960s and ‘70s but cautioned that many of these archives while firmly rooted in their community led a fragile existence. The Report advanced the concept of an archival system in which Canada’s full documentary heritage was to be found not in a few governmental archives but in a system of cooperating institutions, supported by a willingness to collaborate, a shared data-base of the scattered holdings and project funds for common initiatives. The excerpts, below, provide the key sections and recommendations of the Report.

Dr. T.H.B. Symons, C.C. in his influential report “To Know Ourselves: The Report of the Commission on Canadian Studies” (Ottawa, 1975) was clear in asserting that; “Canadian archives are the foundation of Canadian studies, and the development of Canadian studies will depend in large measure upon the satisfactory development of Canadian archival resources”. The subsequent report “Canadian Archives: a report to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council” (Ottawa 1980) built on this theme and developed a plan with a series of recommendations for the development of a collaborative Canadian archival system. Three decades later the Canadian archival community and researchers (January 2014) gathered to consider the future of the system. In my opening remarks I outlined the challenges still to be addressed.

In this speech I returned to themes I first advanced as Chairman of the Saskatchewan Heritage Advisory Board (1978-1982): the common values, motivations and goals of all the heritage disciplines. I argued for increased collaboration to ensure that all evidence of our past is used to understand and to present the full, diverse story of the Canadian experience.

The 2012 Houston Memorial Lecture. FAMILIES, vol 52, #1. Feb 2013. This article is included online with the kind permission of the Ontario Genealogical Society Throughout my career, I have found genealogists to be amongst the most enthusiastic, informed users of archives and our most effective lobbyists. I spoke to many groups of genealogists around Kingston, in Saskatchewan and across Ontario and convened the first national gathering of provincially based genealogical societies. For the evening of my retirement on April 24, 2009, I arranged to speak at the annual meeting of the Saskatchewan Genealogical Society in Regina. And a few years later, freed of bureaucratic constraints, I addressed the Ontario Genealogical Society in Kingston.

In 1998 I was invited to give the 16th Queen’s University Archives Annual Lecture. This marked the 30th anniversary of the establishment of a fund designed to help build Queen’s already rich collections related to Canadian studies and to honour Chancellor James A. Richardson (b. 1885, d. 1939). I took the occasion to discuss the archival acquisition program Queen’s University Archives was able to advance in the 1970s, largely through donations but assisted with the occasional strategic purchase enabled by this fund. This evolved into a memoir of my early archival career.

"One of the Closest and Truest of Friends I Have Ever Had": Mackenzie King, Arthur Doughty, and the Public Archives of Canada. 1999 Late in1999, I was invited to speak at a conference organized by the University of Waterloo to mark the 125th anniversary of the birth of William Lyon Mackenzie King. In my research on the role of the Archives in achieving the cultural goals of Laurier, Borden, and King, I had been struck by the many references to Arthur Doughty in the King Diary. It was clear that both men shared a background in social work and a continuing interest in developing and nourishing a sense of nationhood in Canada. This began as a speech for the symposium and evolved into an essay published with other papers from that symposium in the book Mackenzie King Citizenship and Community, edited by John English, Kenneth McLaughlin and P. Whitney Lackenbauer. (Robin Brass Studio. Toronto. 2002.

This article is included online with the kind permission both of the publisher and of my co-author. One of the most uncertain times for the preservation of an authoritative record of leadership immediately follows the electoral defeat of the government. Over the years I have had to deal with the defeat of several provincial premiers and federal prime ministers. In every case, the first responsibility the day after was to alert the premier and his ministers and their political staff of the importance and necessity of maintaining a full record and seeing their files appropriately transferred to the archives. In almost every case, it was impossible to plan the transfer in advance of the election or to budget for the substantial and inevitable costs involved in integrating the records into the archives’ descriptive systems. Peter DeLottinville, who had dealt with this challenge federally and I collaborated on this article as part of a study on the transition of power in Ontario in 1995.

Remarks made at the Virtual Monetary Appraisal Forum Dollars and Sense. National archival Appraisal Board. March 7 & 8, 2022. In 1970, I was one of the first archivists enlisted by Robert Gordon, Chief of the Manuscript Division of the then Public Archives of Canada, to form a document appraisal committee. I was actively involved in the monetary appraisal of archival fonds for several decades, culminating in an appraisal of the textual component of the superb Hudson’s Bay Company Archives to the Government of Manitoba. In recent years, I have been assisting the National Archival Appraisal Board and was invited to speak to their virtual Forum in March, 2022. I proposed a new approach to appraisal, derived from the total cost of stewardship for a donated fonds, of whatever documentary medium.