"My first responsibility as sound archivist was finding and acquiring surviving radio broadcasting anywhere in Canada and I had great times poking around transmitter sites and whatever attics/basements I was allowed into." -ERNEST J. DICK- (IMAGE: Various audio media with headphones. Photo by Dale Gervais.)
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Pursuing History: The Joys and Hazards of Following All the Stories of the Past

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June 1, 2023

Experienced by Ernest J. Dick

Granville Ferry, Nova Scotia

This memoir is dedicated to Nance, my life-partner for 49 years, who witnessed and weathered my working and playing with the past – always with grace and with love.

Following our Family History

Our long and tedious work on our fruit and vegetable farm in the “sun parlour” of Canada in the 1950’s gave us lots of time to think, and to listen. We often worked together, whether in hoeing, suckering, topping, chopping, spudding, hanging, and stripping tobacco; in planting and hoeing everything from beans to sweet corn; and in harvesting asparagus, cabbage, cauliflower, potatoes, peaches, and tomatoes (earlier than anywhere else in Canada). We milked our cow, fed calves (sometimes riding them), looked after pigs and chickens, and shovelled a lot of manure! We butchered pigs and chickens, canned anything and everything, and washed a lot of dishes!  Indeed, hand-washing dishes became such a fundamental ritual that we never did get a dish-washer (and neither did our daughters).

Thinning peaches (pulling off the very small peaches in early June so that remaining peaches could grow to a good size) was a particularly urgent job where we would all work on the same tree at the same time, and was a good place for conversation.  We also needed a distraction from the peach fuzz which could be very irritating. Here I discovered that Dad loved to tell stories of our family past of coming to Canada in the 1920’s as refugees from the Russian Revolution and his own experiences growing up as a Mennonite in southwestern Ontario in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Particularly Dad’s stories of building the Trans-Canada Highway through the bush in northern Ontario as a conscientious objector to World War II were great fun for him, and he could tell his stories of eating beans three times a day over and over again! I was an eager (and active) listener, and still am, and always had impertinent questions that my Dad, and most everyone else, welcomed.

I wanted to ask my grand-parents about their stories, but was warned not to ask my questions about their somehow surviving the Russian Revolution because they wouldn’t be able to sleep that night. I was able to record one interview where I promised to steer the conversation towards their pre-revolutionary memories and recall my Grandfather telling me of a game they played on frozen ponds that sounded something like hockey. My Mum warned me never to broach the past with her parents and never volunteered anything herself, beyond how hard it was.

We did have a great-uncle who was determined to evangelize Russia rather than escape to Canada; who somehow made his way to China, then to India, and eventually to Canada in 1939. He offered his Christianity everywhere he went, living as a man without problems (having seven children along the way), eventually offering us a sermon in our tomato field in the early 1960’s.  Usually, we would take a break whenever family came to visit but this time we kept at our tomato picking, as my parents were obviously wary of his evangelizing.   

The night of my grandfather’s funeral, my dad offered a story about my grandfather in the midst of the Russian Revolution that I knew I had to follow. My grand-father, as a Mennonite and conscientious objector, was a medic on the trains caring for Russian soldiers retreating from the German front in the First World War and he had a vivid memory of soldiers taking their guns and ammunition back to their own villages at one point. This was the beginning of the Russian Revolution, similar to scenes in “Doctor Zhivago” which my grand-father would never have watched. My grandfather similarly abandoned his post and returned to his own village, where looting and worse had begun. Indeed, German-speaking Mennonites were a target for Russian revolutionaries and anarchists because they were affluent and they had sometimes welcomed the invading German army into the Ukraine.

Somehow in the midst of this chaos, my grand-parents were married in 1920 though they didn’t dare wear their wedding clothes which may still be buried in a remote corner of their property. Indeed, one of their survival strategies was to sew patches onto their clothing to disguise perfectly good clothing that would be worth stealing. 

Dad told a story of my grand-father’s Mennonite village deciding to ambush the Russian bandits and anarchists who had been harassing them. Germans had left guns and ammunition behind when they retreated, encouraging the Mennonites to hold the territory for them. My grandfather took a public stand against this ambush in a Sunday morning congregational meeting but was outvoted by his congregation. He was thus assigned the duty of driving the team of horses pulling the wagon with his Mennonite friends holding their guns as they headed off to ambush their Russian neighbours, and to teach them a lesson. The Russians were more experienced with ambushes and guns, and rather ambushed the Mennonites who very quickly jumped off the wagon, rolling safely down a hill.  

My grandfather was left driving and turned the wagon around, making him particularly vulnerable to the Russian bandits. He was unharmed which he attributed to his Russian neighbours recognizing him and choosing not to shoot him. He had always had good relations with his Russian neighbours and believed that these relationships saved him and his family from the worst of the Russian Revolution, and allowed them eventually to come to Canada. The fellow Mennonite who had proposed this ambush eventually lived in a neighbouring Mennonite community in southwestern Ontario, and my Grandfather apparently avoided crossing paths with him for the next 70 years.

I always believed we had no records of anything before Canada (always treasuring the mirror that I still have in my kitchen, which Mum dated as an 1890 wedding present my great-grandparents had been given and had somehow survived the revolution). But Dad produced a diary my great-grandfather had kept before WW I in a difficult-to-read archaic German and Gothic script and together we produced a family history Courage, Courage, the Lord Will Help – The Family History of Johann P. Dueck and Descendants from Schoenfeld, Southern Russia in 1990.

I considered Dad’s story the night of my grandfather’s funeral the formative story for our family, as my grandfather and then my dad always fostered strong relations with their neighbours, and became very Canadian in the process. Working very closely with Dad in self-publishing 100 copies of our family history was important for both of us, and absolutely confirmed a mutual empathy in our relationship for the rest of our lives. 

Another of my grandfather’s brothers had become a devout Communist and his daughter, her husband, and their son came to the Dick family reunion we held in 1990. I had included a couple of paragraphs on this family (based on what I had been told) but now expected this to be clarified (and maybe denounced) by the son who could read English, from his work as engineer. Rather, he considered that I knew more about his family than he knew, given how history was taboo in his growing up in the Soviet Union in the 1960’s. 

Over time, more and more memories of my grandparents resurface and they can both surprise and delight us. The family found butter wrappers carefully folded and stored in my mum’s mother’s freezer when she died and I saw this as evidence of her environmentalism long before anyone knew the word. The story of my dad’s mother told at her funeral was of her demanding to know what was new in the world, when she was in her last days, demonstrating her curiosity about the world that I would like to think I inherited (and have continued). 

I absolutely became a devout Maritimer over the decades but my southwestern Ontario beginnings always stay with me. We all came home for the weekend to help Mum and Dad eventually move off the farm into town when they accepted retirement in 1996. My siblings (two younger brothers and two younger sisters) always had their own poignant and distinctive memories of our family experience and a video camera captured much of our remembering that weekend. I combined this video with 8 mm film footage of us on the farm earlier in the 1950’s and we hired a film-maker to put it all together in a very intimate short film I called “Sandy Acres Farewell”.

Everyone appreciated watching the film at a family gathering but showing it at a wider family celebration was awkward. We had watched the silent 8mm film footage together so many times (always providing our own running commentary) that Mum now felt obliged to correct the audio track I had constructed. A perfectly innocent, and even charming, moment that also demonstrated how intimate and invasive listening and remembering can be. 

I did succeed in leaving the farm in all my archiving and curating, but the farm never left me. Dad packed me up with tools and, of course, the dreaded hoe which we eventually had bronzed and mounted as a gift for him on his 65th birthday. Naturally I took my sports equipment with me when leaving the farm (which included Dad’s boxing gloves for some reason) and decades later I presented them to the Essex-Kent Mennonite Historical Museum, offering them an essay explaining the significance of everything!

We also had a small original wood-lot on our farm where my luthier brother found cherry-wood to carve a sign that said ‘Sandy Acres’ and portrayed Dad farming with a horse and a tractor (which has now gone to his farming grand-daughter). The same brother used five different woods from the wood-lot (representing the five of us) to make a cutting board to hold Mum’s bronzed “zwiebach” for her 65th birthday. Another brother commissioned a folk artist to depict the family farm with each of us doing whatever we remembered fondly.   

The folk painting was delightful, but our parents might have had problems seeing me riding my pony while a sister was jumping on the trampoline and another brother was practising his foul shot. We devised an impromptu skit where we explained everything at my parents 50th anniversary celebration and the painting became the family treasure we hoped that it would be. Then for another anniversary I had a grand-daughter combine photos of Mum and Dad’s wedding in 1945 with their wearing their wedding clothes in 2010, and had this made into a puzzle which each family put together at our 65th anniversary dinner.  Most recently I have commissioned a collage of 1940’s era photographs of my Dad and his buddies building the Trans-Canada highway up at the Montreal River.  

We all left the farm following very different career paths, far from southwestern Ontario, and Mum began writing weekly letters (using carbon paper for five copies sent in five directions) affording us news from the farm. I certainly considered this banal and irrelevant to my busy and involved life, but now read them with admiration for their positive and affirming wisdom.

After doing my film of our family from the weekend Mum and Dad moved off the farm, I attempted an oral history construction of our family experience. I interviewed each of my siblings separately and transcribed and organized these interviews as a sibling history. My sisters (whom I had never been able to be close with) appreciated it and welcomed the opportunity to learn from each other, but my brothers were more ambivalent about the project. My middle brother offered his vivid and colourful memories at great length but didn’t learn anything from anyone else. My youngest brother was taken aback with the candour and angst of some of our remembering and needed assurances that no one beyond the five of us would ever see it. I shut the project down, as increasingly in my 70’s, I am not planning to distress anyone with whatever historical projects I take on. 

I then had another experience of family history when my mother-in-law moved out of her home into a nursing home. Her Alzheimer’s left her with no memory of people past or present, though she remained very gracious with anyone visiting. Over a winter I organized everything from her drawers into two massive scrapbooks, asking her daughter to identify people and places as best she could. The next summer, we visited my mother-in-law in the nursing home and brought her these scrap-books. She never identified anyone, or asked about anything, but seized them with a determination that she had lost in her dementia. She turned the pages fiercely, almost tearing them from the binder. Her mementos and photographs were connecting with her, as nothing else did at that point in her life. Here the hazard/opportunity was for her, not for me, as these scrapbooks were almost awakening memories that she knew she had lost. For me, this somehow confirmed my life’s work with the past. Now, having exceeded my “three score and ten” I find myself identifying dates and occasions on family heirlooms (just as Mum did), fully realizing that my memory is slipping away.

One day I asked Dad (then in his late 80’s) about any regrets or disappointments with his life on committees trying to do public good, and he admitted that knowing his family and friends considered him to have wasted his time in public service to be his biggest sadness. I resolved to address this by turning his 90th birthday into a community celebration but my mother vetoed that (always being ambivalent herself about Dad’s public service). We did have a smaller family celebration for Dad and I prepared and delivered his eulogy on that occasion. Doing so certainly gave Dad and me a great relationship in his final decade of his living, and my brother added to the eulogy that we assembled for his funeral in his 99th year.

Mum’s legacies are the memory albums she meticulously prepared (each with their lovingly sewn containers) for the five of us and her 12 grand-children. She even kept my grade six art projects (which would be embarrassing to my nine-year-old grand-daughter). Mum was determined that she would give these to us as soon as she had compiled them, not wanting to keep our past around her.  

When Dad passed away in his 99th year I was asked to take responsibility for family letters and records and brought everything to Nova Scotia for the purpose of sorting out what should become of everything. My siblings were dubious about anything of our family being available in an archive, but acquiesced to my insistence that our family record deserved to be preserved. They were particularly apprehensive about a memoir that my mum’s Dad had written, which I considered disappointingly innocuous, given his crusty demeanour. 

Dad had long been supportive of Conrad Grebel College at the University of Waterloo where they are developing an archive of the Mennonites of Ontario and had also been a founder of the Essex-Kent Mennonite Heritage Centre where they are building a museum and library collection. Their stories and have been deposited with both facilities on my “Ontario Farewell tour” in June 2022.

I continue to ask questions of my family history any chance I get, invariably intrigued with how persistent, malleable and confusing memory is for all of us. 

Being Archivist

We, absolutely, spent every Sunday morning in church and our particular Mennonite tradition offered us a great variety of lay ministers from Sunday to Sunday. The lay minister who stood out for me with his unpredictability and spontaneity was also our high school history teacher, Reverend Penner. When he was speaking (and it never sounded like preaching) I paid more attention because you never knew where he was going, or where he might end up. His wide-ranging curiosity and intellect were on full display in his infrequent sermons and I invariably wanted to discuss his sermons on our short drive home on the sixth concession after church. I took notice that history apparently encouraged and stimulated creative unpredictability and would like to believe that I continued this. 

We thought we were being clever in diverting him from his lesson plan in our history classes, but he would somehow direct our diversions to history, and then invariably end the class with a time-line on the chalk-board. Years later, I found it necessary to have my on-line students complete a time-line in reviewing each of our lessons and often thought of the delight he would have had in that. Reverend Penner’s example inspired me more than he ever knew and continues with me pursuing ‘all’ the stories of the past, that I know he would be very pleased with. Indeed, the first piece I ever had published was a remembrance for my mentor and high school history teacher, Reverend Penner, celebrating his cheerful and inquiring approach to history and to life. Decades later his son recalled my remembrance and that still affords me great satisfaction.

Indeed, that led me to consider that telling someone’s stories was something I could be doing and began my looking for eulogies and tributes that I could offer the world. Now, in my 70’s, I read obituaries wherever, and whenever, I might find them. Many offer an authentic perspective on a lived life though I do wonder why some never admit to why the person died, as if this something they are ashamed of. Of course, I prepared Nancy’s obituary at some length and took great satisfaction in paying the considerable sum newspapers are now charging for printing them.

I always knew, and my family knew, that I was not going to become a farmer. I could work as long and hard as anyone, and still can. But the uncertainty of relying on a farming income terrified me. I had seen a hail-storm destroy our tobacco crop (which was our most reliable income each year) and knew how much Dad agonized over his crops. Then when we did have a good harvest, others might as well, and the flooding of the market would collapse prices. Daily, we would make careful calculations as to whether it was more useful to continue harvesting tomatoes (yielding 45 cents for an eleven-quart basket), or hoe weeds somewhere which might compromise a future harvest.

We all knew that I loved reading and explaining, questioning, and refuting anything.  Dad’s suggestion (and hope) was that I become a lawyer. Given his experience with buying and selling properties he considered the legal profession the easiest money around. I was certainly intrigued by the intellectual opportunities, challenges and ambiguities of the legal profession (and have watched every episode ever made of “Law and Order”, “Bull”, “The Good Fight”, etc, etc). But I always knew that I did not have the fortitude and resilience to become a lawyer, though I would have become a judge (if this were possible without first being a lawyer). I always enjoyed listening to all sides of any debate or difference, invariably offering another way of looking at life (whether it was welcome or not).

Dad had regretted not being able to go further in school than his completing eight grades of elementary school in six years, and was thus expecting all of us to take up higher education (and took great satisfaction that our farming could support this). I majored in history and politics at the University of Waterloo (without a career plan) and enthusiastically accepted a summer job researching the history of Mennonites of Canada at the Public Archives of Canada in Ottawa that summer when I left the farm at the age of 22. 

In Ottawa that first summer, I was given great freedom and latitude in my research; following all sources that might contain references to Mennonites, or not. The Public Archives of Canada had opened a brand new building at 395 Wellington Street and I was assigned my own “cubby-hole” (overlooking the Garden of the Provinces) which I could use 24 hours a day/7 days a week and did. I had escaped the farm and I was not going back! It was a great summer and exceeded all expectations of what life beyond the farm could be. Indeed, I never could visit my parents again during the summer season until they moved off the farm because I knew how demanding their work would be (and that I would need to help out).

Researching that summer at the Public Archives of Canada I was encouraged to become distracted by whatever caught my fancy. I remember looking for references to Mennonites coming to Alberta in the 1870’s and becoming fascinated with the first hockey games being played in Alberta those same years. Admittedly these distractions didn’t make it into the History of Mennonites by Frank H. Epp that was eventually published; but my curiosity in following whatever stories the past has to offer has never left me.

Microfilming was the first information miniaturization/access tool and had begun to be used for business and library purposes between the wars. The National Library of Canada was actively and ambitiously microfilming national newspapers in the late 1960’s when I began my research. They would allow researchers to access the original newspaper if it had not yet been microfilmed and I quickly learned how much easier (and more effective, and certainly more interesting) it was to browse a newspaper itself rather than peering into a microfilm reader. Indeed, I made it a priority to research actual newspapers that had not yet been microfilmed both because it was less tedious and tiring and because it was intriguing to follow obscure and irrelevant leads. And still to this day I find a wider range of articles to follow in my Saturday Globe and Mail than in my daily digital subscription, which very quickly allows me to keep up with subjects that I already know I am interested in. 

The grand research rooms, with expansive tables, (where you could spread all the documents archival staff would find for you), 12 foot ceilings and wonderfully eclectic murals at each end were a paradise for me. These research rooms overlooked the Ottawa River where the Chaudiere rapids were still being used in 1968 to bring logs down from the upper Ottawa River, and I convinced myself they were connecting me to Canada’s past.

I developed a research habit that summer of asking the same question of different reference archivists/librarians staffing the reference desk throughout the day. I tried to be discreet and would wait until the first reference librarian/archivist took their break. Absolutely, I would need to check out any source that would be repeatedly recommended. Even more intriguing were the unexpected sources they might lead me to, and here I would exercise my own intuition invariably finding leads that few others might have followed. 

My continuing this research instinct in our digital times means I am always using different search engines and always finding different ways to ask the same question.  And I still ask different reference librarians the same question, invariably finding new sources or new ways of researching something. This means that I have a complicated relationship with the algorithms that search engines are constantly evolving and admit to vehemently denouncing them on occasion while sometimes quietly making use of them. A small, innocent example would be my e-mail providers and cell phone alphabetizing my list of contacts by both first and last name. I railed against this for years, but now admit to finding it useful!

I definitely had to explore history further and enrolled in the graduate program at Trent University in Peterborough to do a Masters on the Canadian response to the Depression. Being a student of the 1960’s I was equally intrigued with politics and improving society in those days and landed a job with the public service in Ottawa promoting Canadian citizenship. Opportunities in those days were admittedly abundant and Nance became secretary at the House of Commons, giving us access to the West Block cafeteria whenever we needed an inexpensive dinner. I would attend parliamentary committees whenever proceedings looked interesting and would steal a peek into the Parliamentary Library with its flying buttresses, friezes, gargoyles and all, but never succeeded in devising a research project allowing me to work there.

Promoting Canadian citizenship was a dream job, I believed. We were funding festivals, friendship centres and much more but personalities and egos quickly dismembered my idealism. I became disenchanted and needed something more practical.  Remembering my “perfect” summer researching at the Public Archives of Canada, I resolved to find a job there. They had a permanent position in the Sound Archives Division and I promptly “interviewed” the head of the Sound Archives and read everything he could recommend for me. Indeed, when I was hiring people later in my career, I was always inclined to hire anyone who showed the same initiative and determination that I did, and worked with fascinating people over my lifetime.

Maybe I undertook this preparation because I was not a natural sound archivist. My Mennonite community took four-part harmony singing very seriously but I always knew that I did not have a discerning ear, or voice, for that matter. I was never able to distinguish music from noise (let alone what might be off key or not) and always considered myself somewhat an imposter as a sound archivist. My recourse was to become a devotee of Murray Shafer, the avant-garde composer, sound environmentalist and inventor of the World Soundscape Project at Simon Fraser University. His team was literally travelling the world to record the sounds of particular spaces and places, and I was able to use their recordings in my ‘Soundscape of the Millennium’ project (that will be explained in a later chapter).

My first responsibility as sound archivist was finding and acquiring surviving radio broadcasting anywhere in Canada and I had great times poking around transmitter sites and whatever attics/basements I was allowed into. A great example was the Harry Foster radio studio which was still intact in Rosedale in Toronto. The last technician working there helped me move to Ottawa more than 2,000 radio transcription discs, ¼” audiotapes, and an equal amount of scripts of radio programming that they had recorded from the late 1940’s to the 1960s. And I got to know Harry, “Red” Foster, a formidable athlete, broadcaster, founder of Foster Advertising and founder of the special Olympics in the 1960’s. He was pleased to be recognized and treated me to a grand dinner at the Chateau Laurier’s Canadian Grill – an establishment that I never got into otherwise.

One of the great intangible benefits of being an archivist are the friendships you develop with notable people who are taking you seriously, because you are now taking their lives seriously. Norman Campbell (long-time radio and television producer best known for writing the musical “Anne of Green Gables” (still being staged in Charlottetown) was pleased to come to our upstart Association for the Study of Canadian Radio and Television meetings. Michael Donovan (Halifax film and television producer) who brought “This Hour has 22 Minutes” to television and won an Academy award for producing “Bowling for Columbine”, spoke to my class about his making “Shake Hands with the Devil”, admitting that this worthy project had derailed his career. Norman McLaren, legendary NFB animator, gave me all the time I had, even if I had not yet seen many of his films. Peter Jennings, ABC news anchor was “glad-handing” at a New York City reception I was attending but stopped and talked to another Canadian about his father Charles Jennings (Canada’s first national news reader and founder of the CBC). Bob Weaver (the CBC radio producer long considered the best friend of Canadian literature) had me for lunch at the Four Seasons across from the CBC radio studios on Jarvis street just as he did with writers from Mordecai Richler to Margaret Atwood.  

Because I was always interested in other archives anywhere, anytime, I represented Canada internationally at the International Association of Sound Archives. We had conferences in Melbourne, Brussels, Amsterdam, Tokyo and Milan always with special music organized for us, always in historic architecture! I somehow was able to camouflage my musical disability relying whenever possible on my life-partner Nance who was a great singer (and complemented me in this and so many other ways).

Eventually it was my turn to host my international friends and colleagues working as sound and moving image archivists, and we made use of the stunning new Canadian Museum of History on the Ottawa River (designed by Douglas Cardinal). That meant that I also had to organize an appropriate sound event/experience for everyone and was more than a little intimidated by whatever we could offer. I knew that a boat ride on the Ottawa River below Parliament Hill (with the CBC stocking the bar and the weather cooperating perfectly), would enchant everyone. Then as we walked up to the National Arts Centre via the Rideau Canal locks beside the Chateau Laurier for the final banquet I had a friend from the National Arts Centre orchestra organize a trumpet fanfare that provided an appropriate sound signature for their Canadian visit. 

My responsibility for radio broadcasting, of course, included CBC radio and we began to move some 100,000 radio transcription discs from Toronto to Ottawa. The CBC Radio Archives was led by the redoubtable Robin Woods on the top floor of a nondescript six-floor building in Cabbagetown, that was otherwise used for rehearsals and costume storage. Indeed, moving on from radio to also work with CBC television I may have known closets and cubby-holes holding CBC’s history in Toronto’s 20 some locations better than any single human being. I recall using the Queen Street streetcar system to get to the CBC radio archives and then using public transit to visit all the locations in downtown Toronto. 

Similarly, I became familiar with CBC locations from Yellowknife to CornerBrook, bathtubs full of audio tapes at Chateau Laurier (where CBC Ottawa had its studios on the 6th floor) and the delightful repurposed car garage at the corner of Sackville and Young streets in Halifax. Indeed, I may have been more familiar with Maison Radio-Canada on Boulevard Rene Levesque in Montreal than any Anglophone in the country, being able to make my way to visit all the friends I had there. Then, when the Canadian Broadcast Centre opened in Toronto I quickly knew which elevator to take to get to which department and took delight in prowling corridors that intimidated most visitors. 

Through curious bureaucratic shuffling I ended up responsible for the preservation of sound and moving images at the National Archives of Canada and was always overwhelmed by this awesome responsibility. I immediately and completely understood the irony of my working with film and broadcast archiving, let alone being responsible for it. Never going to the movies on Saturday afternoons as everyone else did and not even having television until I was a teenager I had no favourites I could recall, and was always a disappointment at ‘Trivial Pursuit’.  It’s not that I didn’t pick up a lot of trivial bits and pieces along the way (that I was never shy about offering), but I was never able to recall them when required.  

Canada had begun a national film collection at the National Film Board that was lost through a fire in the midst of centennial celebrations in 1967 and we were briefly the favourite project of federal funding in the mid-70’s at the Public Archives of Canada. I developed a program for federal funding to go to provincial and regional archival programs from the Cinematheque Quebecoise in Montreal to the Aural History program at the Provincial Archives of British Columbia and many others.  

Then a cache of nitrate film was found in an abandoned swimming pool in Dawson City. Dawson City was the end of the line for film newsreels coming here during the Gold Rush beginning in 1896 and unique materials were found that were eventually restored by the Library of Congress. I was relieved that our very glib director and film preservationist took the lead and can be seen in the excellent 2016 documentary “Dawson City Frozen Time” that was eventually made from this footage. 

Preserving the ”moving image” (as we preferred to call it) meant understanding at least a dozen different film formats, magnetic tape on another 50 formats over 50 years, and always knowing that digitization was coming. This made for a complicated and rapidly evolving world and we always kept in touch with moving image archiving around the world. Our parent organizations were making unprecedented investments in film and television archiving and had to know how best to do this. We were very involved in the Association of Moving Image Archivists (a North American association of anyone working in this field) and I was honoured to be its second President in 1991. I appreciate that “film” has become the accepted term and have always tried to show anyone what actual film looks like and how it works (though I am not certain that many understand or maybe do not even need to know).

Given my estrangement from a new National Archivist (explained in a later chapter) I leapt at the opportunity of coming into the CBC at the invitation of outgoing President, Pierre Juneau. Juneau was asking the question of how the CBC was doing with its past and my doing an inventory of CBC sources at the Public Archives of Canada for CBC’s 50th anniversary in 1986 made me an obvious candidate. Through my travelling and visiting of the CBC I determined that the CBC was doing better than it realized in preserving its past, and my report “The Future of the CBC’s Past” led to my becoming CBC’s first and only Corporate Archivist. 

Working at the CBC in the 1990’s, just as digital communications were overtaking everything, afforded me an exceptional opportunity to go digital. The CBC was taking advantage of digital communications and we had the best trainers anywhere at Head Office on Bronson Avenue in Ottawa. Colleagues, friends and myself have always been impatient with my technical phobias and dysfunctions, but the CBC computer department saw me as their advance warning system and appreciated learning whatever ‘glitches’ I was falling into. I took every training workshop ever offered and very distinctly remember the CBC head of “computerization” one day discussing personal computers versus Macintosh computers. His own preference was for the Mac but he admitted that the CBC would have to be working with both, and that we should always remember that all computer systems have advantages and limitations. This training inoculated me against the superiority that Mac users sometimes have towards the rest of the world.

We often had technology companies coming to us hoping that archivists would endorse their latest technologies, and one of our suggestions was that they embed the date of creation of anything (just as newspapers and magazines have long included the date of printing on each page). Digitization often inadvertently destroys provenance by ignoring the date of creation of a post, a web-site, a Wikipedia entry, a Youtube video, or anything. Admittedly, e-mails invariably automatically embed their date of creation (including the time of day of transmission) which authenticates them for me, and may well be why I have come to rely on them so much.

As Corporate Archivist I had access to all information systems at the CBC (one day counting 12 pass-words taped to my computer screen). Digitization facilitates unprecedented instantaneous access to information and broadcasting absolutely needs to be instantaneous. Traditionally, libraries and archives had developed evolving cataloguing rules to facilitate access to their holdings and the CBC had done likewise. With digitization, cataloguing became a luxury that the CBC quickly jettisoned. Spreadsheets or databases are the digital equivalent of cataloguing but these take time and time is a luxury a broadcaster never has. Search engines (and even humble word processing) develop their algorithms to help any of us navigate their exploding wealth of stuff and I fancy that I have become proficient in using all of them in my being a researcher and archivist. Maybe it is my CBC experience that has made me wary of cataloguing, databases and spreadsheets, all anticipating how the world will need to use the past.

Digitization arrived in the middle of my career and has changed everything about archiving forever. Obviously, digitization facilitates access to the stories of the past in dozens of ways that all of us make frequent use of. But whether digitization also facilitates preservation remains to be seen, and is hopefully being discussed widely.  My fear is that the inevitable miniaturization of digital everything will destroy the past more quickly at the same time as it makes the past more accessible. I vividly remember one of our technology leaders bringing a sledge hammer to a meeting to offer an accelerated aging test on new formats being proposed. His observation was that a single swing of his sledge hammer would destroy more information on digital formats than it would on 35 mm film with its signal spread across 24 frames per second or a ¼” audiotape running at 7 ½ inches per second.  

My private test-case is to compare the survival of the 12 photos from our 1970 wedding (kept in a small album in my home office) compared with hundreds of photos taken at my daughters’ weddings in the 21st century. For the first decade my daughters kept their photos on their phones, obviously making them more immediately accessible than the photo album here in Granville Ferry. But in the second decade I could access my photo album here at home often more quickly than my daughters could search out whatever device they had migrated their photos to. Yes, I fully appreciate that my daughters can more easily migrate their wedding photos at a higher resolution to new formats, but will they? Also, my photos will degrade if exposed to natural light, which is happening to the photo I have enlarged for our family gallery, but the closed album is holding its original resolution and colour admirably after 50+ years.

Admittedly, I dutifully back up my laptop computer regularly, which means that I now have my own museum of obsolete formats that make my cardboard archival boxes and files a relative delight to access. I rely on “clouds” to preserve my collaborative projects with others more than I realize though admit that I do not fully trust these technologies. Hence I do print out a lot of paper in my home office and will have substantial boxes to deposit with archives eventually.   

While working as CBC’s Corporate Archivist I learned that someone at Telecom Australia in Melbourne had refurbished the Australian Broadcasting Corporation “Blattnerphone” recorders from the 1930’s. The CBC had used this same German technology (the first magnetic recordings on metal tape) in Ottawa and I assembled the 12 metal tapes still hanging around CBC storerooms and shipped them to Melbourne (where they were delighted to use their equipment to listen to these recordings again).  I, of course, followed this shipment to Australia and arrived to a film-crew ready to document me as the “Indiana Jones” of sound, listening to whatever was recorded on these reels for the first time in 50 years. I vetoed this “opportunity” because I knew that it was going to take much listening (with many others) to discern what we were hearing. This proved very prudent as this early sound recording technology was recorded over earlier recordings (rather than anything being erased) and we found fragments of all sorts of recordings (including an unknown recording of Charles de Gaulle from London exhorting the French to continue their resistance).  

My work with the CBC over-lapped for a couple of years with Austin Willis returning to his Halifax beginnings and allowed me to understand his very complicated and long-standing involvement with broadcasting. He had been the CBC radio duty-announcer announcing the beginning of World War II, hosted the “Victory Loan Broadcasts”, made films with Peter Sellars, Clint Eastwood and others; eventually hosting the game show “This is the Law” on television and much else. I was particularly intrigued with Austin Willis mentoring William Shatner and “Scotty” Doohan in space travel in CBC’s first dramatic series “Space Command”, in the early 1950’s. My colleagues at CBC Film Library in Toronto found for Austin Willis the pilot of the series, but then also uncovered that the 150 episodes were recycled for their silver content when silver prices had boomed at the end of the 1970’s. We couldn’t do anything but lament this, but I did follow the writer of this series and confirmed that his widow still held these scripts in their Hollywood home. I had friends at the UCLA Film and Television Archives who would gladly visit to confirm and appraise these holdings but she imagined a big pay-day and declined my involvement. Maybe she did get her pay-out, but I doubt it. Being successful in convincing potential donors of the value of their collections is an occupational hazard of being archivist and undoubtedly cultivates an inscrutable and dour demeanour as a result, which I was never very good at.  

Working with both radio and television at the CBC also afforded me opportunities to understand the relative strengths of each. Radio always considered itself the senior service because it had been around longer but television considered itself the more important medium because it always had bigger budgets. Radio had more flexibility and immediacy because a simple phone line could bring a story into your car and workshop. Television was always more compelling because it brought you visuals into your family room or bedroom. Radio was more intimate while television was more memorable. In recent decades the CBC has increasingly attempted to merge the two media, though anybody with experience of both will quickly acknowledge that radio allows for a more intimate and sophisticated story-telling. I invited my students to understand these differences for themselves by comparing “The World at Six” on CBC radio with “The National” on CBC television for any particular day but doubt that any ever did. All of us are easily enamoured of television and I will admit to programming my “personal video recorder” to capture every game of the NCAA “March Madness” basketball and the French Open or Wimbledon tennis tournaments. For daily news and reflection on anything and everything I have come to make CBC radio my constant companion, while preparing and eating my meals or driving in my car, and believe that it affords me a very necessary calm and balanced perspective.

Naturally, I look for archival credits in any book or film documentary I ever see and take delight in familiar names or institutions that might be credited. I always take satisfaction when “As It Happens” on CBC radio almost daily acknowledges Radio Archives (and still know a few of the people working there). And I am disappointed for CBC television archival workers who are usually ignored. I have to admit to being always dismayed at the placement of hairdressers or caterers coming well before visual researchers or archives in film credits. I admit to envy for music composers as their tunes will always be more prominent no matter how much of the production uses their material. Indeed, I cheered when my CBC colleague insisted that the producer of the Emmy-award winning documentary, the “Fifth Estate’s –Just Another Missing Kid” in 1981 watch the production without the archival footage he had secured (now cut down by half) even if he did not to get to go to New York City to accept the award.

My reporting that the CBC was doing better than it knew in preserving its past was both my contribution and my undoing at the CBC. The staff doing this work (whether management understood it or not) were delighted to be recognized and my championing their work was satisfying for them and for me. My report for CBC senior management “The Future of the CBC’s Past” in 1990 was well received and was the basis of Jennifer VanderBurgh’s review of CBC archiving “Against Ephemerality – the CBC’s Archival Turn, 1989-1996” published in Cinephemera: Archives, Ephemeral Cinema, and New Screen Histories in Canada by Zoe Druick and Gerda Cammaer (McGill-Queen’s University Press – 2014).

Indeed, Jennifer has become a great friend and directed her students to the CBC Head Office “historical section” collection which I eventually moved to Saint Mary’s University when the CBC did not know what to do with it after moving from their Bronson Avenue headquarters. And Jennifer has happily inherited more than a few of my CBC “souvenirs” that I could not resist collecting.

But the CBC never quite knew where to put their Corporate Archivist in their organization and a Vice-President I was assigned to was determined to eliminate my position. He was of the view that the past would only encumber the future and gave me six months to invent a strategy for financing my position. This was easier than anyone imagined because CBC programming always relied on its archives more than it ever admitted. Nonetheless, his mind was made up and my position at the CBC ended 3 weeks after my 50th birthday.

But then this Vice-President was himself eliminated and the CBC Head Office organized for me a three-year appointment as Consulting Archivist and Historian from Granville Ferry, Nova Scotia. I consequently had a gracious “retirement” from the CBC, retaining friends and contacts for many years thereafter.

CBC archival/library colleagues are more cloistered, and more dedicated than anyone, anywhere, in my working experience. Because this is my memoir I will celebrate my great friend, Doug Kirby, at CBC Halifax. Doug was often the first CBC-er to volunteer for anything we were organizing, paying his own way to travel, if necessary. Doug caused his management distress with all the overtime he put in processing raw footage and older material that someone would need some day (whether they realized it or not). I remember Doug going in to work at 10:00 pm on Sunday evening the night of the Swiss Air disaster because he knew that the international media would need this footage early the next morning. He never expected to be compensated for his exemplary commitment, though everyone at every program launch always acknowledged Doug Kirby. 

CBC television in 2020 did a dramatic series, “Late Night in the Studio” inventing the CBC archivist as a quirky, obsessed geek, which I considered a compliment, and a tame portrayal of my own idiosyncrasies. I was never dressed as nattily as my television invention and my voice is downright irritating in comparison to his witticisms. Hopefully they were honouring Robin Woods, the original CBC radio archivist, who always looked splendid! My more fundamental problem with “Late Night in the Studio” was their invention and remaking of CBC archival programming rather than actually using CBC archival resources with all of its “quirks and quarks”.

A hazard of working as archivist is the researcher who knows what they want before they visit, and are angry with you when you cannot fulfill their request. Our early experience of this was John Diefenbaker, the Conservative leader wrapping himself in the British Ensign protesting the introduction of the “new” Canadian flag introduced by Lester Pearson in 1967, and the filmmaker accusing us of being Liberal party stooges in not delivering the footage to him. Diefenbaker making this dramatic gesture had been well-reported, but not captured by footage in our collections. Our strategy here was to take an extended coffee-break when such researchers arrived. Those researchers who came without an agenda became great friends over the years.

“Colin James Presents the Blues Masters” in his 1997 series on CBC television was a particular example that I had personal experience with. Experimental format videotape recordings had been made at the CBC in Toronto of black blues musicians in the 1960’s (including Muddy Waters) that were not seen or heard on American network television at the time. This was a short-lived format and I remember the eloquent argument we made to purchase the equipment to play back these obsolete 2” wide videotapes. Colin James played along with them 30 years later in his 1997 series and I arranged to have this shown at one of our archival conferences. The Colin James program was a great concept and well done IF the series had not opened with the clichéd cobwebs and dusty shelves housing this material AFTER we had organized such pristine storage, handling and re-recording of these tapes. The “booing” of my archival colleagues still rings in my ears!

Then, as I write this in 2022, Jeremy Dutcher is being celebrated for his “discovery” of recordings of indigenous people. These recordings exist because a Catholic priest, Marius Barbeau recorded them on wax cylinders in the second decade of the 20th century, long before anyone else was doing so. Admittedly, it would be complicated for anyone to acknowledge anything positive from the relationship between indigenous people and the Catholic church in the 21st century, so this is never mentioned (not even in the Wikipedia entry on Barbeau). These recordings came under my jurisdiction at the Public Archives of Canada in the mid 1970’s and we explored taking them to Syracuse University, then the leading facility in the world for the re-recording of wax cylinders. We decided not to record them precisely to protect them because playing them back would have inevitably eroded the signal. A couple of decades later, laser scanners could capture the original recording without doing any damage and I certainly enjoyed Jeremy Dutcher bringing his singing of these songs to King’s Theatre in Annapolis Royal. Those recordings undoubtedly have had a dozen different archivists who exercised great responsibility and wisdom in preserving them over the 110 years, but Dutcher made it sound like it was all his doing and his alone.

Now archivists very, very rarely make money from their expertise though archival appraisals supervised by the National Archives Appraisal Board are the one occasion where we are actually compensated for a life-time of experience.  Revenue Canada regulations require appraisers to be paid by the archives/museum/library acquiring the collection (not by the donor); that donations be completed before appraisals begin; that appraisals will be based on “fair market value” and that appraisers will always remain confidential. These are important and useful conditions and being an early “retiree” from the National Archives of Canada and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation I was a logical candidate to appraise sound, film and broadcast collections. Such assignments are always fascinating and I became well known in the small community of Atlantic Canadian moving image and sound archiving.

Film-makers, like all creators, invariably value their work more highly than the world around them. They know how much time, money, and commitment went into their productions and are hoping/expecting the world to someday recognize this. I shared their commitment and had good relationships with many a film-maker. But then a Halifax film-maker (who will not be named) asked me to appraise his collection before he deposited it with an archive. He took great umbrage at my assessment of his collection. It was an important and worthy collection and my assessment followed standard procedures but did not come close to his investment in these productions. I fear that my name was rather sullied in the small film-making community of Nova Scotia and I again was “retired” from such intriguing assignments. Indeed, I have declined to take on such opportunities more recently precisely because I respect and admire the film-makers so much!   

I was also appointed to the board of the Nova Scotia Film Development Corporation from 2002 to 2007 and immediately understood that I was the only non-political appointment to this process. I actually knew and cared about film in Nova Scotia and had great fun “educating” my fellow board members to this history. We received modest honorariums for our participation and consider my greatest contribution being welcoming “Trailer Park Boys” to Nova Scotia government funding.

Archivists may be the most eclectic, non-binary, diverse, passionate and sometimes perverse, profession anywhere and I felt completely at home here. Canada’s first film archivist, Bill Galloway, was a junior A hockey star who joined the National Film Board, and used his hockey connections to appeal for collections of Canadian film between periods of Saturday night hockey broadcasts in the 1960’s. Jana Voskivska was our Slovakian head of public service at the National Film, Television and Sound Archives, whose energy intimidated many a colleague and researcher and I still regret that I never got to climb a mountain with her. Josephine Langham was a Brit with all the sophistication and charm that we were in complete awe of. Jacques Gagne was a separatist from Quebec City who refused to ever utter a word of English (because we were working in a bilingual environment) even if he spoke English with a British accent and German with a Munich accent and we loved him for it. Jacques visited us in Granville Ferry with his German wife years later and both of us were completely confused at what language we would now be using.  

Another fellow was a formidable expert on Canadian feature film over the years and came under my responsibility to his (and my) dismay in the 1980’s.  His characteristic feature was wearing dark glasses at all times, that he could remove to better appreciate films when he took them in. He took great pleasure in denouncing any error or omission he found anywhere, with considerable vehemence. He had been wary of publishing or even making a presentation (as archivists often are) because some new find or mistake is inevitable, and I took satisfaction in the Public Archives of Canada eventually publishing his life’s work.  I do not recall what combination of flattery or threats I used to have him agree to have his work published, and almost earned a grudging admiration from him when it did arrive.  

Then there was our director, a Montrealer who could have been a younger brother of Mordecai Richler. His initial greeting was invariably a challenge or a flirtation (depending on whether you were male or female) and he charmed everyone who never actually worked with him. He had worked at the British Film Institute (THE original leading film archives) and thus intimidated underlings and loved to do so. He wore a double-breasted blue blazer with gold buttons so often that we debated how many of these he had at home. And he had the disconcerting habit of falling asleep (with his eyes open) during meetings when he was bored.  

We never dressed up for work because we would rarely ever be dealing with the public but our secretaries would dress up on Christmas and New Year’s Eve, and bring in elaborate food and drink for the impromptu office parties that would emerge on those days (until management announced that they were giving us a half-day off). We knew so much about each other’s lives it was almost a cloister we were working in.

More than a few of these archival colleagues became life-long friends. Ed Dahl had also worked on the history of Mennonites in Canada around 55 years ago and eventually became Canada’s leading historian of cartography and map collecting. Ed now has gone back to the land, making hay in French for his neighbours in Val de Monts, Quebec but keeps in touch with sporadic, but extensive, phone calls and e-mails. Jim Lindner was our gigantic geek, always able to keep up with evolving technology and eventually made millions inventing a robotic system for converting analogue videotape to digital. Somehow in this process he found his way to Nova Scotia, establishing a screening theatre/culinary retreat near Lunenberg and restored the largest Lutheran church on the LeHavre river where he set up a community radio station. Grace Koch is the leading expert on Australian Aboriginal Music in Melbourne Australia and visited us here in Granville Ferry a couple of years back. A great joy and blessing of being an archivist is the connections and friends you make with donors and other archivists and librarians. 

Being an archivist may be one of world’s least understood professions. Many are not being able to spell or pronounce the word and admit to never having met an archivist before. Some confuse it with anarchist which I quite enjoy. Others thought they were being kind calling me historian and that I always corrected.  I never became a historian despite the many ways I have found to work with the past. I had great friends who were historians and loved being amongst them.  

Historians seek to understand the past and even point to truths they have discerned. I considered that I was always more speculative, more confused, more open to new evidence and more provocative than historians have to be. I was interviewer and detective in my questions, recordings, curating and books but always resisted offering a definitive history even if I was always chasing history. 

Maybe a way to understand the archivist is to consider him or her the adjudicator between the past and the future, between the creator and the user.  The archivist worries equally about copyright protection for the past and the future, understanding that a free and open society has to evolve a balance between creator and user. Indeed, one cannot think of another profession that has to balance these conflicting objectives which is why the archivist can have both creators and users unhappy with them one day, or very grateful, the next.

In the end, the archivist is useful in more ways than anyone ever imagines or wants to admit. The CBC Vice-President who eliminated my position challenged me to find a way to justify archiving in the face of all the cuts the CBC was facing. This was simpler and easier than either of us expected because ongoing CBC programming makes more use of its archives than they ever want to admit. Indeed, my offering to manage CBC archives on a cost-recovery basis may well have led to my forced premature “retirement” because this Vice-President understood how dangerous I might be to his plans.

Re-inventing myself from Granville Ferry I continued being an archivist (usually on a voluntary basis) and always humbled by how much people will leave with me, trusting that it will be appropriately “archived” somewhere, somehow. I am honoured to be so trusted and am indeed designating that the charitable portion of my estate be directed towards an accountable community archive.

One of my grandfathers demonstrated an archival instinct when he added dates to the birthday and Christmas cards we might give him and I find myself doing the same with memorabilia that will survive me.  The Geoff Butler painting commemorating Nance (hanging permanently in our community library) now has her obituary taped to the back. And I find dozens of ways to establish the provenance of paintings, furniture and anything else that will survive me.

Also, now in Granville Ferry and “retired” from paid employment I have time for listening, publishing, curating, animating, and becoming a detective. Now I can truly follow “all” the stories that might intrigue me or might complement the tangents that my projects call for.   

Listening and Publishing

While doing my masters at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario I did my thesis on how the depression of the 1930’s had challenged and revised assumptions about most everything. I had stumbled onto the League for Social Reconstruction and Fellowship for a Christian Social Order seeking to find a new way forward for Canada and came upon King Gordon, who was then living and working in Ottawa. His name really was “King” and I have never before or since met anyone who deserved the name both in bearing and in wisdom.

King Gordon was son of the most important social gospel novelist and activist, Ralph Connor and brother-in-law to poet F.R. Scott.  His son, Charles Gordon became one of Canada’s most important columnists from the 1970’s to 2005 and daughter, Alison Gordon was a well-respected reporter, CBC broadcaster and novelist. King Gordon had worked with the United Nations on its first peace-keeping mission and founded Cuso International (the international agency for young people serving overseas). He had lots to say and remembered lots, but was reluctant to spend too much time with the past because he was still active in contemporary affairs.  

My new position as sound archivist at the Public Archives of Canada allowed and encouraged me to prevail upon King Gordon (as I so often do) and we had an extensive series of interviews. Most of our interviews were in Gordon’s home that he was renting in Rockcliffe Park and Gordon often brought in letters or reading material for me for our next session. This led to his collection coming to the Public Archives of Canada where eventually Eileen Janzen used this collection (and our interviews) and published an important book, Growing to One World: The Life of J. King Gordon in 2013. She made exemplary use of the oral history interviews together with everything else in the King Gordon collection and her book remains a satisfying, even if it has no juicy revelations and did not prompt any media attention when it was published.

I inherited the direction of an oral history project of retired parliamentarians with legendary CBC reporters, Tom Earle and Peter Stursberg doing interviews. Peter Stursberg had a formidable voice and presence from his pioneering World War II reporting from France, which I was completely in awe of. Eventually Stursberg did a series of oral history books on John Diefenbaker (Diefenbaker: Leadership Gained, 1956-1952 in 1975 and Diefenbaker:  Leadership Lost, 1962-1967 in 1976) and Lester Pearson (Lester Pearson and the Dream of Unity in 1978 and Lester Pearson and the American Dilemma in 1980) and his publishing of oral history prompted concerns that I found myself in the middle of.  

We had release forms signed for each public figure being interviewed, with virtually everyone wanting the world to know their stories. When the newly elected Conservative Government of Brian Mulroney was established in 1984, Lloyd Francis was appointed to the Senate and he asked us to close his interview that had been deposited with us. I got a call on a Saturday morning from our kindly Dominion Archivist asking me not to speak to the press about this and to come to a meeting first thing Monday morning in his office. The decision was quickly made to close the interview as requested and a press conference was organized for later in the day. Jean Chretien was the new leader of the official opposition and led an assortment of reporters down Wellington Street to the Public Archives of Canada to demand that the interview be opened. Chretien was simply reminded that we would not open his own records from his time as Minister of Justice in the previous government and he went meekly back up to Parliament Hill (if you can imagine Jean Chretien doing anything meekly).

A few years later, the press heard of revelations that Erik Neilson, now Deputy Prime Minister, had spoken about the Conservatives listening in to Liberal caucus meetings by way of the House of Commons translation services in his interview years earlier. The message from the new National Archivist appointed by the Conservative Government was to handle this and make sure it went away. I put in a call from the Prime Minister’s Office and very simply explained that these revelations by Neilson were already published in one of Stursberg’s books and that closing the interview would only draw more attention to these revelations. This “kerfuffle” quickly went away but I always had the sense that our new National Archivist was suspicious of me. 

Oral history was becoming fashionable for popularizing history in Canada in the 1970’s with portable cassette players becoming common. Barry Broadfoot’s Ten Lost Years in 1973 began Canada’s fascination with oral history. We became involved with the formation of a Canadian Oral History Association but also encountered suspicion of academics who did not consider oral history to be proper history. They considered memory fallible (which, of course, it always is) and preferred records dating from the period they were studying. Conventional archivists had always been wary of creating the historical record and after the controversy with the Peter Stursberg books the Public Archives of Canada shut down its oral history program.  

We considered that telling stories of the past is the oldest and most enduring way to know the past, and always will be. I became good friends with James Morrison, historian at Saint Mary’s University, who taught a course on doing oral history and has a wide assortment of books and contributions that earned him a well-deserved Order of Canada.

I watched the NFB series “The Valour and the Horror” broadcast on CBC television in 1992 with great interest because it was centered on oral history and it became the greatest historical controversy we have ever had in Canada. Their docu-drama format combined actual footage from World War II with enacted sequences using actors to portray soldiers of the time and with veterans visiting scenes of their experience. This format had aroused suspicion when the 1983 film “Kid Who Couldn’t Miss” had challenged Billy Bishop’s exploits as a WW I flying ace. When “The Valour and the Horror” raised serious and necessary questions about the morality of wartime leadership strategy and decisions, the Canadian Legion led a campaign protesting the series and kept their outrage in the public eye for a full year. 

I published two articles in Archivaria (the professional journal of the Association of Canadian Archivists) reviewing the series, and then the protests, from an archival perspective.  The researchers for “The Valour and the Horror” had interviewed more than 90 veterans for each of the three episodes and I concluded that they had followed their interviews very carefully even if their putting the reflections of 60-year old retirees into the mouths of 20’s something actors was unsettling to my literalist instincts. I would have preferred to see actors in their 60’s rethinking their World War II experience, or even the veterans themselves. Indeed, I still consider that showing the veterans themselves rethinking their experience might have muted the protest.

“The Valour and the Horror” also selected two veterans to host each episode where they actually visited with their former enemies with compassion and openness. Academic and critical reaction was initially somewhat mixed, but public reaction was increasingly hostile over the year that “The Valour and the Horror” was in the news.

At the CBC Head Office I was working down the hall from the Communications Department responding to this criticism and remember the production team from “The Valour and Horror” offering careful and thoughtful replies to all criticisms. Then I attended the parliamentary hearings where Senators expected to castigate the makers of “The Valour and the Horror” who wanted to discuss questions of history.

I was following all of this controversy very carefully and waiting for any of the interviewees (either seen on screen or those interviewed) to protest the series. Not one denounced the series! And I found a prominent Canadian historian (who had been in World War II) and an uncle still serving in the Canadian Department of National Defence privately welcoming the questions the series was asking. Nonetheless the unprecedented controversy around “The Valour and the Horror” demonstrated the hazard of bringing oral history onto television. And, we have never had anyone attempt to follow their example.

Working at the CBC Head Office on Bronson Avenue in Ottawa in the 1990’s, I initiated an oral history project with retirees, finding a well-respected retiree in each city and region of the country to interview CBC retirees. This was widely appreciated by everyone and I conscientiously deposited all interviews at the National Archives of Canada and circulated an inventory of the hundreds of interviews we had done as widely as possible.  

As far as I know these interviews have never once been used and expect that current management and staff do not need to hear from past CBCers on what they are doing.  Indeed, I often find myself lamenting that younger generations do not have the time or interest in listening to their elders, but maybe here are simply reflecting my own age.

Once living in Granville Ferry I took up interviewing, initiating oral history evenings in all the community halls from Victoria Beach to Milford to Tupperville (often working with the Annapolis Heritage Society, one of our local historical societies). I would identify local sources and confirm their participation, before announcing our evenings and this guaranteed great turn-outs and quality remembering. We would always re-organize the seating in circles diverting the intentions of the most important local sources who were maybe planning a quick exit. And I would always have a question or two for those sitting closest to the back door. This made for lively evenings and won me friends that remember me as I cycle past on the Granville Road or hike over the North Mountain on their logging roads.

From my Granville Ferry perspective, I made it my project in 1998 to revisit the 1948 making of the National Film Board’s “When All the People Play”, an early example of a community taking ownership of film-making. Annapolis had hired a recreation director in 1948 to energize their community and Bobby Potts happily sat with me explaining the people and scenes in this land-mark film. Every time I showed “When All the People Play” more people would volunteer further identifications of the hundreds of people seen in dozens of locations.  

Then James Lorimer (Formac Publishing) approached me to do a history of “Singalong Jubilee” (the CBC television folk music television show from Halifax from 1961 to 1974) launching east coast music. Doing this as oral history was an obvious strategy, allowing everyone from Anne Murray, Bill Langstroth and dozens of others (including my tennis partner and neighbour, Steve Rhymer) to be heard in the book, Remembering Singalong Jubilee (Formac 2004). Most everyone wanted to be interviewed and all were delighted with how I assembled their story, as far as I ever knew. But I did run afoul of two snags where the publishing process went against my own instincts.  

Anne Murray had been ‘discovered’ and made a star by “Singalong Jubilee” and was obviously a central focus of our book. Many recalled her early singing insecurities and I used a most gracious memory of her closest friend helping Anne overcome those.  Knowing how important Anne Murray’s endorsement would be, the publisher submitted the draft to her publicist who vetoed any mention of any singing limitations whatsoever. Perhaps the sales of our book at the Anne Murray Centre over the years vindicated the publisher’s acumen but I have always regretted that this glimmer of honesty did not make it into history. I have offered my research and interviews when other projects have followed the “Singalong Jubilee” stories and invariably appreciate how they are taking the story further.

I had also stumbled onto CBC management in Toronto becoming nervous with Fred McKenna, the blind-from-birth guitarist and music director during the later years of “Singalong Jubilee” in the 1970’s. Admittedly, McKenna looked uncomfortable and awkward (simply because he didn’t know how to hold himself) and CBC management sent a memo to Halifax directing them to move McKenna away from being so prominent in the centre of many shots. The Halifax producer sent back a simple telegram, “Fuck Off”, which I considered a wonderfully concise epitome of the ongoing Maritime/Upper Canadian dynamic. The publisher vetoed this expression because he wanted our book to be saleable to family audiences.  My sense that this represented a courageous and eloquent statement on behalf of disability fell on deaf ears.

The launch of Remembering Singalong Jubilee at the auditorium of Pier 21 was a grand occasion (and a great reunion for cast, crew, and friends of “Singalong Jubilee”).  This is undoubtedly my greatest financial and critical success, leading to a CBC radio documentary on “Maritime Magazine”, a very successful long-running Eastern Front Theatre musical tribute show, and modest ongoing Public Lending Right payments that are still coming in.

“Singalong Jubilee” had initially been the summer replacement (and then successor for “Don Messer’s Jubilee”) which remains the most successful program ever in Canadian broadcasting.  First on radio from the 1930’s to the 1950’s from Charlottetown and then on CBC television from Halifax from 1957 to 1969, Messer’s combination of old-time fiddling and square-dancing earned great loyalty from Canadians everywhere. CBC cancelling “Don Messer’s Jubilee” in 1969 prompted unprecedented protests across Canada, and on Parliament Hill, and stimulated books, stage-plays, tributes and debate. Given the success of my oral history format with “Singalong Jubilee” the CBC invited me to do a similar book on Messer. There had always been an aura of suspicion around Messer (even before his show was cancelled) and we had competing Messer revival shows travelling the country in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. I, of course, welcomed the curiosity and poignancy that this might add to my interviews and the eventual book. The CBC, however, withdrew from the project and I decided to move on to other projects, given lawsuits that were being threatened. 

I always knew that my best friend from highschool had lost his father in an air crash but knew little else. His wife asked my buddy, Bob Page to tell me his stories, encouraging me to do a history of this event. 118 people had been killed on Trans-Canada Airlines flight 831 (a week after the Kennedy assassination) on the 29th of November 1963 but press coverage was momentary and most families had simply moved on with their lives.  

This crash remains the most serious loss of Canadians on Canadian soil of a Canadian air-line but had not been spoken of for 45 years. No cause was ever found for this crash on a brand new DC 8 (without the monitoring equipment required a few months later). Then the crash happening in the francophone community of Sainte Therese before bilingualism was common meant that few could connect the victims and their families with the community where the crash occurred. Bob and I had tried to find the crash site and the memorial marker in 1967 on our visit to the world fair in Montreal, but no one understood our fractured high-school French and we certainly didn’t understand the gas station attendant a mile from the crash site.

We published a very simple announcement in the Globe and Mail in 2008 asking if anyone remembered this and immediately people began contacting us. Our book became a conversation with 150 voices and 118 tributes to the lives lost and was a cathartic and positive experience for everyone.  A powerful example was the 17-year old daughter of a CBC film-maker (who died in the crash), who became a potential hostage victim. She had never told anyone her story until she told my high-school buddy (who had a similar experience with a threatened kidnapping). We were perfectly prepared to continue to respect her privacy but now she insisted that her story be included in our book!

But no publisher (or eventually media) wanted to hear of this ‘forgotten tragedy’.  We decided to self-publish and recruited very solid editing and design/layout expertise to help with Voices from a Forgotten Tragedy – Trans Canada Air Lines Flight 831, which was published for the 50th anniversary in 2013. We were able to recover our editing and production costs and in 2022 Amazon is offering used copies at $147. 

However inherent limitations of authorial collaboration and self-publishing manifested. Our editor recommended an editorial strategy of “anonymizing” anyone who wasn’t a contributor or victim of the crash; thereby focussing on the already complicated story of the 118 victims and 150 contributors. One of our collaborators was an aspiring genealogist and believed as many names as possible would widen the appeal of the book but I contend that adding all these names diminished any potential literary or critical attention to which I aspired.

We spent five years working on this project and organizing the stories thematically so that contributors would be having a conversation. My strategy is always to include an index allowing readers to use the book however they choose because I always rely on indexes with any non-fiction book I have ever used. My collaborators vetoed an index that could allow a contributor, family member or curious reader to make their own path through the book. They needed readers to read the book as we had assembled it rather than have their own way with it. 

Austin Willis was introduced to me by Costas Halvresoz, who was then hosting “Maritime Noon” for CBC radio in the late 1990’s. We all vaguely recognized Austin (and his silver hair) but knew nothing of his career of 6 decades on stage, radio, film and television. Everyone knew of Austin’s older brother J. Frank Willis who invented radio news in 1936 when he told the world about the Moose River Mine cave-in and became the authoritative face and voice of television news in the 1960’s.

Austin Willis had always played buffoon to everyone from Peter Sellars to Bob Hope; been neighbour to Clint Eastwood and walked dogs with Beatrice Lilly; hosted everything from “Victory Loan” broadcasts to the television game show “This is the Law”; been a pioneer in space travel on television; and much, much else.  The kids watching him move into his Dartmouth retirement home in 1999 asked “did you used to be Austin Willis?” Apparently the neighbours had vaguely recognized Austin moving in.

Costas and I were completely charmed by Austin Willis’s stories and we organized for Austin to tell his life story for audiences at King’s Theatre in Annapolis Royal and Convocation Hall at Saint Mary’s University. We hosted Costas, Austin and Gwen (his 5th wife) and local friends at a dinner party and he arrived in his favourite camel-skin coat (and the biggest smile we have ever seen in Granville Ferry). I was more than a little nervous about how this was going to work. These evenings were a great success and all the time Austin was finding scripts, photos, memorabilia and always more memories that he was pleased to donate to Saint Mary’s University archives. We put together a video of his performances he could use for further audiences but Austin never used it. He needed Costas to host him, just as he had hosted so many in his career.  

Austin definitely wanted a book and always had new stories to offer. I visited him the last weekend of his life in the Dartmouth hospital and this time brought him a story that I had found which he promptly corrected. It was an innocent story about a lost rubber boot on a slushy Toronto street that Austin was reported throwing in the car window of its owner. The incident had actually happened to his older brother the revered J. Frank Willis but had been attributed to Austin (as it was more believable for Austin than for THE J. Frank Willis).  

For a variety of reasons it took 15 years to eventually put together Silver Hair and Golden Voice – Austin Willis from Halifax to Hollywood, published by Nimbus in 2020.  They used many photos from Austin Willis’s performing life, also adding context in a side-bar, explaining who Beatrice Lilly, Orson Welles, Roy Rogers, or Sammy Davis Jr, would have been to Austin. Many have appreciated the book and perhaps it needed 15 years to provide distance from the great friend that Austin Willis became for me. 

I had met Vic Mullen, the legendary bluegrass/country fiddler and banjo player from Clare, when doing the book on ‘Singalong Jubilee’ (he had done the more complicated banjo pieces off-stage for Bill Langstroth, the host of the program). I knew that he had important stories to tell from his 65 years of performing in every corner of Canada and also knew that he wanted to (and needed to) tell his stories. I spent a year with Vic, interviewing, transcribing and organizing his stories around the provisional title “Being the Song:  Vic Mullen from Clare to Nashville to Preeceville, Saskatchewan”. We had a great time together but he couldn’t bring himself to letting me take my draft to publishers. Vic had positive and negative experiences of self-publishing music and was not able to let anyone else take control. He always had more stories to tell and details to add. Maybe eventually these stories will become a book but perhaps has to wait until Vic Mullen does not have more stories to tell?

My father-in-law, George Parker, had grown up as part of a Black loyalist community in Karsdale, Nova Scotia and then operated Lewis Transfer, the Black cartage and delivery service begun by Rose Fortune, Nova Scotia’s first lady of Black Loyalists. I hung on his every word (though I never kept up with his appetite for rye whiskey) and some day hope to chronicle his introducing me to Annapolis Polly, the local poetic prostitute; his being end-man in local minstrel shows; his adjudicating the Liberal Party drinking club; and much else. 

George’s great friend and co-worker, Robert Ruggles, transferred his loyalty to me when George passed away and was completely open to my recording his experiences.  Often his wife, Betty came along (always dressed splendidly for the occasion) and I eventually transcribed/organized these outings as “George Driving Robert and Betty”.  Robert and Betty are very expressive and genuine people, and their family was pleased with my project, but I do not expect that it will go any further. 

Sylvia Hamilton, the justly celebrated black Nova Scotian film-maker has asked me to respect the genuine humility of Black African Loyalists in Nova Scotia and I will certainly do so. Betty greets me with enthusiasm as she continues to walk our community and I still drop in on Robert whenever he is sitting in his porch at the very foot of Lower St. George Street in Annapolis Royal.  His memories are fading (as they do for so many of us) but he appreciates the company which may be the most important and honest quality of oral history.

In the summer of 2022, I was able to do a five-week “Ontario Farewell” tour visiting all the friends and family I knew from Bar Harbour to Ottawa, to Amherst Island, to Breslau, to Goderich, to Leamington (where my 98-year old mother could not recognize me but somehow knew that Nance had passed away) to Niagara-on-the-Lake, to Middletown, CT, to Augustine Cove, PEI. Everyone needed a visit (as much as I did) and everywhere memory was failing, but also being recovered and treasured anew.  

I have always been an active listener in my 50+ years of listening and publishing.  Sometimes it means asking the same question in different ways, and sometimes means waiting until the end of the afternoon, or for years, to ask the same question over again. Our memories are indeed malleable and failing but in the process will also reveal new and old ways of understanding ourselves.

Curating and Animating

I was never content to leave the past in the past. Whether it was repeating my Dad’s stories or telling Frank H. Epp about the progress of hockey in Alberta (when I was supposed to be researching the history of Mennonites) I always had to share what I had stumbled onto, and still do, whether friends and family are interested or not.

My first Sound Archives assignment at the Public Archives of Canada was to listen to (and catalogue) the recordings made of William Aberhart’s Sunday afternoon broadcasts of his Prophetic Bible Institute that had made him premier of Alberta in 1935 in the midst of the Depression. Aberhart never actually spoke in the provincial legislature, preferring to explain himself over radio (where he could not be challenged).  These broadcasts were recorded on 16” diameter instantaneous recording discs that very likely had never been listened to over the 40 years that they had been sitting in a radio station closet.

I knew something of the 1930’s context of these broadcasts from my thesis on the Depression and expected Aberhart to be more of a fire-brand and evangelical than he sounded to my ears in the 1970’s. Indeed, this was my first experience of the archival record not conforming to expectations and it delighted me that I was being surprized by the past. I brought these recordings to the Canadian Historical Association meeting at the University of Alberta in 1975 for the 40th anniversary of the election of the Social Credit.

A few years later, I did a series with Don Harron, the well-known wit and punster, who was then hosting the CBC radio network morning show. This was more than a little intimidating as I was in an Ottawa studio and knew that I could never match wits with anyone, let alone with “Charlie Farquharson”. Harron began our session by asking me about anyone being an “un-sound” archivist and I stammered helplessly.  Fortunately our sessions were not live and a sympathetic editor had me reply with a quick retort and everything went on nicely from there. It also gave me a life-long appreciation for editors, whom I was always happy to work with.

My most ambitious sound project was a 16-part series on sound over the past 1,000 years in the year 2000, with Michael Enright hosting the CBC radio morning show. Finally, I was able to return to Murray Shafer, the original and venerable philosopher of sound and to explore how bird songs evolved; the amplification of sound; the regulation of sound; noise pollution over the centuries and much else. I was exhilarated by the wide range of topics I followed and we got a nice positive response and still have people remembering it fondly on occasion.

I used this “Soundscape of the Millennium” project to pitch a series for CBC radio’s daily morning show, which I entitled “Sounds of Canada”. My concept was to bring forgotten sounds to a national radio audience by inviting prominent people to re-discover them. For the Aberhart recordings I proposed that we invite Preston Manning to listen to them with us (as his father, Ernest Manning, had been Aberhart’s lieutenant). CBC radio provisionally accepted my concept until Preston Manning refused to listen to these broadcasts (which he had undoubtedly been required to listen to in his youth). The CBC cancelled the concept before it got started and I had another experience of the past being sometimes hazardous for people.

I always paid particular attention to how sound animated or obfuscated the past, because I understood how powerful and intimate sound often can be. I was invariably proposing soundscapes, which were rarely taken seriously; though my random collage of radio programming that was heard in Nova Scotia in the 1940’s is still playing in a period living room at Memory Lane Heritage Village on the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia. 

At the Public Archives of Canada in the mid-1980’s, we were invited to do a public exhibition (given how much money had been invested in archiving film, television and sound) and I quickly volunteered to take this on. Most of my archival colleagues were cautious, if not downright resistant to presenting archives to the world but I had no such hesitations. Nobody else wanted this challenge (which I saw as an opportunity) and I proposed that we focus on actuality and news thereby reflecting the wide range of our holdings. This project became “Beyond the printed word: Newsreel and Broadcasting Reporting in Canada from 1897 to 1987” and we hired staff and contractors to take on unprecedented opportunities and challenges.

Richard Huyda, Director of Public Programming at the Public Archives of Canada, was assigned to work with me when we began this project and we met first thing every Thursday morning in the fifth floor cafeteria for 3 years. He was completely non-judgemental with whatever progress we were making, or not, and able to let our exhibition evolve and take shape over time. This became an approach I have taken with each of my curating/animating assignments. All of them look and feel completely different, offering very different stories told very differently, and I take great satisfaction in that.

“Beyond the printed word” facilitated acquisitions from a great variety of sources (as everyone wanted to be acknowledged in a public exhibition) and we also began talking with the National Museum of Science and Technology about their collection of cameras, microphones, sound and video recording equipment, radios and televisions. They were very supportive and indeed offered to host this exhibition in their facility connecting us to a bigger audience than the Public Archives/National Library building could ever attract.

Curators in those days expected visitors to follow a prescribed course and direction in their visits and this was expected of our project. Knowing how kids of all ages are going in all directions at any museum anywhere I did not want to limit or direct the experience of visitors to our exhibit. Anyone could enter from different directions and bounce around the exhibit however they liked. And they did!

We were only 20 years beyond Expo 67 and the explosion of unprecedented audio-visual experiences being offered the world in Montreal, and were able to find technologists and designers who wanted to continue this process. Their enthusiasm complemented my determination to show the world the range of our archival holdings and our research team assembled over 400 separate reports that visitors could access.  Admittedly, we did not expect anyone to listen to and watch all eight hours offered them. Rather we wanted the visitor to experience something of the complexity (and confusion and discovery) of being in an archive.  

This project facilitated and encouraged us to search each of these different reports and I became somewhat obsessed with finding and showing the world the original footage of Pierre Trudeau’s “just watch me”. This phrase, everyone was referencing, was from Donald Britain’s acclaimed NFB film “The Champions” and the two minute clip had come to define Trudeau’s personality and politics. Friends at CBC news archive found me for me the original seven minutes of footage that the cameras had captured and that told a somewhat different story. Here Trudeau was more patient, and the journalists more belligerent, than in the 2 minute version everyone was familiar with.  We debated how we could demonstrate this in our exhibition. Obviously this was a more complicated story then we could explain but I take great delight that the full seven minutes is available these days on You-Tube.  Archivists do find joy in the smallest of accomplishments.

We were also able to make use of state-of-the-art laser disc technology that Ampex was offering in the late 1980’s. It allowed visitors to watch what they chose, affording an interactive experience that the world had not yet experienced. We built six kiosks we called “Remember When” offering stories of Canada that visitors of all ages might remember; another six television kiosks and two radio living rooms offering stories fundamental to the development of radio and television in Canada; and a newsreel theatre offered a selection of newsreels from 1901 to 1967. I knew that blank screens could kill the success of our project and our technologists and the National Museum of Science and Technology built in safe-guards that never failed.

Everyone loved the experience, invariably enabling a parent or school-mate to find something they wanted to show the world. Nothing had to be watched in any particular sequence and over 5,000 clips were being accessed daily. Nobody had the experience of being able to access the past so easily and the exhibition was a greater success than anyone ever imagined, running for six years rather than the six months it was originally scheduled for.  

‘Beyond the printed word’ opened on April 7, 1988 with over 500 people attending because the media were curious about what stories we would be offering about them. ‘Beyond the printed word’ did prove hazardous for me personally and brought my career at the National Archives of Canada to a close. A new, very bilingual, and very charismatic, National Archivist of Canada had been appointed a year before ‘Beyond the printed word’ opened; replacing the kindly old-fashioned World War II veteran and conscientious public servant who had approved this project. The new National Archivist asked me to give him a personal tour of the exhibit a week before it opened and I was more than a little apprehensive, knowing how much public money and time had been invested in this project. Also, it was the habit of our new National Archivist (no longer calling himself the “Dominion Archivist”) to insist on changing something with any public exhibition of the National Archives, thereby demonstrating to the staff who was really in charge.

Visiting ‘Beyond the printed word’, our National Archivist was dismayed not to find a news report celebrating the victory of Brian Mulroney in 1984 (as this was the government that had appointed him). I explained that we had tried to avoid overtly political stories in our selections, expecting our exhibition to survive the current government (as it indeed did). He was not happy! 

I had prepared his speech for the opening and he read every word (thanking everyone who needed to be thanked) EXCEPT for the sentence acknowledging my role in this project. Friends and colleagues literally gathered around me to support me in the midst of the opening events and I basked in the delight everyone was having with this exhibition. A week later I received a verbal directive that the exhibition would be changed to include a report friendly to the Mulroney government. I explained in a written memo what this would cost, how long this would take AND that the media would inevitably discover this.  It took no longer than a week and I directed the inevitable call from a national columnist to the National Archivist’s office. The proposed change was never made but my career at the National Archives was obviously over. I began looking for opportunities elsewhere to be an archivist and to curate the past. 

Working at the CBC as the Broadcast Centre in Toronto was being developed in the late 1990’s, I was a cheer-leader for the Broadcast Museum established there. They had plans for a museum and I was pleased to see interactive technology being used here. Then in my exploring closets and corridors of the CBC in Toronto that had evolved over 50 years I came across a technician who had  squirreled away one example of every microphone, every recorder and every bit of technology the CBC had ever used. Ivan Harris was very nervous about showing me his informal and unauthorized collection (because I was from the Head Office) causing me to champion him to anyone who would listen. I did have friends on the Broadcast Centre Development team and took satisfaction in seeing Ivan Harris’s collection eventually being granted display storage space in the Broadcast Centre. I have not been able to visit Toronto, or the CBC, in recent decades and now read on Wikipedia that the collection has been dismantled and the space used for other purposes. It sounds like another CBC President is considering the past an encumbrance for the CBC rather than the empowerment that I always consider it to be?

One day Ivan Harris gave me a magnificent art deco truck decal (of which he had many examples) with vibrant colours of cadmium red, gold, turquoise, green-gold and ultramarine blue that CBC/RadioCanada was using in the late 1940’s. Researching CBC logos I realized that this particular logo also had the shortest life of any because of the coming of television in the early 1950’s. I was determined to resurrect it and appropriated it as the logo for the Corporate Archivist having lapel pins made (that I gave to anybody manifesting any interest or concern for CBC’s heritage). This logo then began to show up on CBC swag and my jacket (with this logo) it is one of my proudest possessions (even if it is also the least practical for any kind of weather). 

Now the CBC has often been ambivalent about celebrating its anniversaries, depending on the political climate of the day. They had done a splendid job for their 25th   and 40th anniversaries in 1961 (radio) and 1992 (television) but had more often ignored subsequent anniversaries.  I was not going to let the 60th anniversary in 1996 go unnoticed but my Granville Ferry office location did limit my influence. Nonetheless I was able to partner with CBC radio in Halifax and convinced the legendary voice of CBC Halifax (Don Tremaine) to narrate an audiocassette of Maritime CBC radio highlights, “CBC Radio in the Maritimes – 60 plus” that pensioners sold as a fund-raiser.

Re-inventing myself in my 50’s with a partial pension, and living in a rural, and very historic part of Nova Scotia, I contacted friends at Acadia University and Saint Mary’s University and made a new friend in Colin Howell, historian of sports in the Maritimes and founding director of the Gorsebrook Research Institute for Atlantic Canadian Studies at Saint Mary’s University. Given my enthusiasm for film and television of Atlantic Canada, Colin invited me to develop a course I called ‘Moving Images of Atlantic Canada’ and I offered it regularly for the next 20 years.  I was curating, rather than being a historian, allowing anyone to understand something of the film and television we have always been making here.

 “Moving Images of Atlantic Canada” quickly became a favourite of the Continuing Education department at SMU and I offered my eclectic and evolving assortment of films and television programs in maybe a dozen locations over the two decades. My favourite location was the basement multi-purpose room of the old Halifax Central Library on Spring Garden Road because so many old-timers were used to coming in here. Indeed, public participants always outnumbered students taking the course for credit and they certainly offered more class participation than students.  They knew the programming I was speaking about, and I fondly recall Rex Tasker (founding director of the National Film Board Atlantic Region office) sitting very quietly in the back row. Rex never volunteered anything but always had a response to any question I might put to him (to enliven the class). Very few ever knew of Rex’s incredible contributions to film-making in Atlantic Canada and I was careful never to “out” him.

Public participation was both the strength and weakness of “Moving Images of Atlantic Canada’”, but students taking the course for credit steadily diminished over the years.  Particularly students hoping to become film-makers did not feel that they had anything to learn from past film-making. Unlike literature or visual art where we all expect to read widely before becoming writers or visit art galleries before becoming artists, film-makers apparently feel constrained if they watch past film-making.  ‘Moving Images of Atlantic Canada’ thus died after I only had 3 or 4 foreign students registered (out of curiosity for Atlantic Canada). 

Here I have to celebrate my friendship with Ron Foley MacDonald, THE commentator on film and television of Nova Scotia on radio and in print for years, and now film-maker himself. No matter what unknown project or production we might be discussing in some coffee-shop somewhere in Halifax we would always know something the other didn’t (but needed to know). Ron and I were the most unlikely partnership given my Mennonite/Ottawa public service experience and his “heavy metal”/establishment family background but I cannot remember us differing on the slightest nuance. And our lunches always took twice as long as we had planned!  

Given my early success with “Moving Images of Atlantic Canada’” the Saint Mary’s University History Department invited me to develop a course where I would explore how film and television had shaped and presented history over the years. This course was so popular with students and the public that we moved it on-line as “Film and History” so that anybody could take it anywhere. This was a great learning curve for me (given my technological ambivalences and disabilities) but I had great support from SMU’s Distance Education technologist assigned to me. I came to understand how my digitally proficient students did not necessarily understand the concept of time in their skill-set and required them to complete a time-line at the end of each week’s lecture organizing the events and films we had been discussing.  Now, my students could emerge from my course understanding that the American Revolution preceded the Civil War and that “Birth of a Nation” was made before “Gone with the Wind”.  They were learning more than they realized, just as I did back in grade 10.

‘Film and History’ began when students were using lap-top computers and was designed so that they would watch selected excerpts from notable films and then post their reactions. They were required to participate in class discussion to earn their class participation marks and could do this at their own leisure. I never lectured and was never seen on line, but responded to all posts and questions during the week that any particular theme was available. I still consider ‘Film and History’ a viable and instructive model for on-line learning.

However while we were offering “Film and History” students were moving towards smaller and smaller screens, and eventually their phones. Their attention spans reduced and they now resented having to watch a full 5 – 10 minute excerpt I had selected for them or to read my introduction of Ken Burn’s notable career, let alone pay attention to Donald Brittain (the NFB film-maker of history). I grew tired of repeating myself over and over again (in our class discussions) and retired from teaching just as I turned 70.

From my Granville Ferry/Annapolis Royal experience I always worked with both of our historical societies and facilitated their collaboration in many ways over the years. The Historical Association of Annapolis Royal, (HAAR) established in 1919, had a long association with Fort Anne (Canada’s first national historic park) and had published books, sponsored presentations and offered tours over the years, leading eventually to the exemplary graveyard tours of Alan Melanson which still bring people to Annapolis Royal. The Annapolis Heritage Society (AHS) grew out of the Canadian heritage enthusiasm of our centennial and focused on saving our built heritage; particularly on lower St. George Street in Annapolis Royal where it is now based at the Odell House Museum. I knew well the archival holdings both groups had accumulated over the years and was always offering advice (whether solicited or not) on sources that could, and should, be consulted.

I facilitated the collaboration of the HAAR and AHS on more than a few Heritage Days programming and then together we revitalized and updated a walking tour brochure “Strolling Through the Centuries in Annapolis Royal” that the Historical Association had begun. It has been a favourite of merchants, visitors and visitor centres for close to four decades now and I took great satisfaction in distributing 20,000 copies annually, giving me an excuse to travel the province and drop in to resorts from White Point Inn to the Keltic lodge or local museums everywhere.

Jim How, my Annapolitan mentor, was more important in animating and enlivening history for Canada than anybody understood. I had interviewed and recorded him (more than he perhaps realized) and knew that there were many in Parks Canada (and beyond) who wanted to speak of him. But Jim How (definitely not James) was also a very complicated human being and I have passed my recordings on to his family hoping that someone, somehow, will tell his story.

I also organized the on-line virtual visit “Strolling Through the Centuries in Annapolis Royal” using the sound recording and slides of a 1950’s “magic lantern” presentation by Charlotte Perkins, our Victorian promoter of local history. I organized contemporary photographs of her historic views and then recorded contemporary local experts offering their own comments in the 1990’s in response to Charlotte Perkins in the 1950’s.  We had packed houses when we presented this locally and the Community Memories web-site was eager to include it in their Virtual Museum of Canada which you can still visit here (https://www.communitystories.ca/v1/pm_v2.php?id=exhibit_home&fl=0&lg=English&ex=00000272). Curiously it never garnered any attention whatsoever and maybe needs to be relegated to one of those concepts that sound better than they work out.

Indeed, I had great satisfaction in bringing the Victorian spinster, Charlotte Perkins, into the 21st century and found a friend happy to become her whenever we had an occasion that warranted Charlotte Perkins coming back to life. Our community has a long tradition of re-enacting history (going back to Lescarbot’s Neptune Theatre of 1606) that I have always been researching.  And ‘my’ Charlotte Perkins was scheduled to make another appearance for our launching Pursuing Clara:  the Mysterious and Improbable Life of a a Granville Ferry Girl (MooseHouse Publications, 2020) when the Covid pandemic quashed our plans.

Naturally, I was involved with local committees taking ownership of the Sinclair Inn in the heart of Annapolis Royal (one of the oldest wooden buildings in Canada, dating from 1708). We were determined that the Sinclair Inn not become another conventional period museum (because we have plenty of those in Nova Scotia). Rather we wanted to expose changes in the building and its ownership over its 300+ years. I invited my technology partners from Ottawa to visit and together we came up with an installation for the basement of the Sinclair Inn. I researched 10 owners and friends  of the Sinclair Inn and created scripts for 10 locals from our community who were happy to become our “ghosts” of the Sinclair Inn. We projected their five-minute “spiels” onto a glass screen (as in 19th century theatrical Pepper’s Ghost projections) and invited visitors to activate whatever ghost they wanted to hear from via video-lottery buttons of 2005.

The Nova Scotia Museum very much liked our Sinclair Inn ghosts and invited me to do the same for the Perkins House in Liverpool, which dates from 1766. We did not have a basement to work with here so we used front-screen projections onto scrims and had Simeon Perkins waking up from sleeping on his bed; three of the Perkins daughters waving at visitors from the back stair-well of the house; Mrs. Perkins and an indentured Black servant crowded into a pantry and five children upstairs, playing marbles.  

We never asked our ghosts to become actors but rather to have fun with their scripts and they brought great energy to the projects. A local realtor from Germany was happy to offer his thickest German accent in portraying Frederich Ziegler who anglicised his name to Sinclair when he owned the building in Annapolis.  A young Acadian lady was pleased to ‘bilingualise’ her script, something Acadians are so good at. Daurene Lewis, Canada’s first Black female mayor in Annapolis Royal (and direct descendent of Rose Fortune) took ownership of the ghost of Rose Fortune, as I had hoped. Family members made a visit to Daurene’s ghost when she passed away a few years later, and her five-minute legacy I consider one of the greatest contributions that Annapolis Royal has to offer.

Staff at the Perkins House invited me to find a way to entice visitors upstairs (where the five kids were playing marbles) and I created a soundscape of the boys calling the girls from the back stairwell to come upstairs and play. The girls are heard running across the floor in their bare feet and then the marbles spill onto the floor when the girls grab them from the boys. What a racket! Indeed, this could scare visitors so I gave staff a button so that they could activate this 30-second soundscape whenever it suited them.

Similarly, at the Sinclair Inn, I was invited to do something further that would be more inviting for people walking by, rather than hiding our ghosts in the basement.  I offered a variety of options and created three-dimensional life-size cut-outs of two of our historical characters that were visible from the side-walk. Then we created a sound-scape of “musings” that offered random challenges and invitations to visit the Sinclair Inn (to be heard on the sidewalk outside). All could be activated by interpretative staff however they chose.

Both the Sinclair Inn and Perkins House installations were received with cautious enthusiasm because they were expected to break down as technology so often does.  My technology partners (Global Exhibit Technology) had become a world leader in installing such projects since we had worked together with “Beyond the printed word” and they built durable systems that worked longer than anyone expected. Indeed, my Sinclair Inn ghosts were still successfully offering their story 15 years after the exhibit opened, though the Perkins House ghosts have been shut down because of problems with their venerable building.

Board and staff of my Sinclair Inn and Perkins House projects often did not know what to make of my installations; maybe considering them a threat to their own interpretation. I had incorporated apparent historical anomalies and mistakes, expecting these to be good opportunities for staff to begin and continue discussions of history. The most conspicuous example were the kids at the Perkins House repeatedly referring to neighbouring “Port Mutton” rather than “Port Mouton” as they had been taught in school.  The French had indeed named this location “Port Mouton” because a sheep had jumped off their ship and drowned here but Simeon Perkins (being a Planter taking over the properties after the expulsion of the Acadians) anglicised the name. Then the staff at the Perkins House admitted that my soundscape of kids playing marbles was apparently too realistic and were not activating it. 

Current staff at Annapolis Heritage Society are interested in perhaps reviving the ghosts of the Sinclair Inn and perhaps even inventing further ghosts to be heard elsewhere in the building.  I am honoured and delighted that “my” ghosts might be revived and will hopefully be able to let a new generation re-invent ghosts for themselves.

Annapolis Royal had a “birds-eye view” map done in 1878 by an itinerant artist; prompting me to work with a local graphic artist to create a contemporary “birds-eye” view for 2005 (the 400th anniversary of the French sailing into the Annapolis Basin). We used it as “end-papers” for a new history of Annapolis Royal and it shows up in the “Annapolis Explorer” (a local promotional flyer for visitors). Our communities have put up panels throughout town so that visitors can understand something of our past whenever they choose. I, naturally, did the same for our community hall in Granville Ferry finding historic views and mounting them on the south and west side of the hall, replicating historic perspectives of the same views.

I certainly have had great fun, and satisfaction, in curating and animating the past over the 40 years; but have to admit to concerns with the “correctness” now expected of our revisiting of the past. Learning from and imitating other cultures and has become castigated as “cultural appropriation” and I fear that this narrows our experience of the past. I absolutely welcome a continuous re-evaluation of anything from “black-face” to residential schools for Indigenous people but doubt that I will ever be able to let the world listen to a sound recording of a local 1950’s minstrel show left with me. Here men of our community were using “black-“face to offer gossip and sometimes truth about their neighbours. They were absolutely appropriating Black voices  and “black-face” to do so, just as the medieval jester was hiding behind his mask but doubt that we are open to hearing this.

Being Detective

My boyhood reading was oriented towards horses and sports, but somehow I picked up the detective bug along the way. That summer of 1968 while researching the history of Mennonites in Canada, Frank Epp challenged me to find evidence of the Prime Minister Mackenzie King knowing something of Mennonites from his early days in Waterloo County. Mennonites always considered that Mackenzie King had personally intervened to accept Mennonite refugees from the Russian Revolution in Canada, AND have voted Liberal ever since. I became completely and happily obsessed with finding this connection and spent many more hours skimming correspondence and newspapers than was expected of me.

The Mackenzie King diaries were not yet open to research but a sympathetic archivist in the Manuscript Division somehow got me access. I pored over them for days upon days, but didn’t have the patience or fortitude to penetrate King’s euphemisms and convoluted prose. I did have dates when Mennonite delegations had travelled to Ottawa but King never mentioned meetings he may have had. Nonetheless I enjoyed the hunt and spent more time with his diaries than I might in the 21st century (where digital tools and formulas invariably provide instantaneous results that weaken our patience for being the old-fashioned historical detective.)  Indeed I have to admit that I find myself relying on Google and Wikipedia more these days than I ever expected, or might even admit. 

A decade later, C. P. Stacey (a formidable historian) published his reading of the Mackenzie King diaries, and here I learned what a true historian could make of this source. I aspire to historical imagining in my being detective and always followed leads, whether they took me anywhere or not. 

A decade later I was working as archivist in the Moving Image and Sound Archives Division at the Public Archives of Canada. When I learned that Canada’s first feature film, “Evangeline” had been shot in Nova Scotia in 1913, I made it my mission to chase this lead. I turned every page of any newspaper of the time and interviewed anybody who should, or might, know something. I certainly visited the site of Canadian Bioscope Company on the very end of Barrington Street in Halifax, and read Longfellow’s poem over and over again.

Following the 1914 projection schedule of the film, I came to believe that the single projection print self-destructed after its showing in May, 1914 in Regina (as most films of that era did, given their flammable nitrate cellulose composition). This was not the last time Longfellow’s poem “Evangeline: was made into a film, and I followed all the other versions of this over the years. Indeed, I brought the 1929 version with Delores Del Rio to Nova Scotia in 1997, (for the 150th anniversary of Longfellow inventing “Evangeline”), and we organized a local accompanist to provide live period music on a theatre organ, just as audiences of the 1920’s and 1930’s would have experienced.

I had not been the first person to go searching for this film (it being somewhat of a holy grail for film historians and archivists for at least 40 years by the time I did my search) but I did add to the pursuit, and the Public Archives of Nova Scotia published all of my findings in an eight-page flyer that they distributed for years from their foyer. 

Thus, when a Montreal film-maker announced that he was making a documentary on this quest we all welcomed him and attended the premier of “The Search for Evangeline” at the Atlantic Film Festival in Halifax in September 2014. He had used this project to discover the history of the Acadian expulsion in the 1750’s (which is always an important and tragic story to be reminded of). But sadly he had not bothered to talk to the Halifax film-maker who was researching the Canadian Bioscope Company that was beginning a public/private partnership for film-making in Canada, or anyone else who had done this quest before him. Instead, he filmed himself walking through a wheat-field in Prince Edward Island and pounding on the doors of the venerable Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., demanding that they release their copy of the film to him. Now wheat fields make for great cinematic effect, even if they are rare in Prince Edward Island and our film-maker had not actually found the National Film Preservation Board where such films might be preserved. His “The Search for Evangeline” has thus deservedly been shelved, and if anybody needs a delightful 150 year Acadian perspective on Evangeline do check out “Evangeline’s Quest” (the 1997 NFB documentary by Ginette Pellerin).

My next venture as a historical detective began more accidentally. I had followed the purchase of the “Croscup Painted Parlour” in Karsdale by the National Gallery of Canada in 1976 and had visited its restoration at the National Gallery in Ottawa. I also knew something of the controversy that its removal from Nova Scotia had generated. It had galvanized a heritage movement for Nova Scotia (and ensured that the “Maude Lewis Painted House” would be purchased and restored at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia). I had friends who had looked after a bank account dedicated to keeping the “Croscup Painted Parlour” in Nova Scotia and we used these funds to create a pop-up exhibit that we called “Bringing the Croscup Painted Parlour Home”.

The National Gallery of Canada had published in 1990 The Croscup’s Painted Parlour, very carefully documenting its restoration, the history of painted rooms and the painter’s use of the London Illustrated News of 1842.  I proposed that we revisit this project from a local perspective. The National Gallery was pleased to cooperate and made available all of their research and high-quality digital copies of the room. We made high-quality half-scale copies of all surfaces of the “Croscup Painted Parlour” and created accompanying interpretative panels telling our stories.

Researchers at the National Gallery were clearly not familiar with our area and did not understand how the artist had incorporated local perspectives in his painting, which the detective in me was more than pleased to be able to point out. Also, the artist had clearly inserted Croscup friends and family into the London Illustrated News scenes he was using and I was particularly delighted to point out Black African neighbours (from the Karsdale Black loyalist settlement) inserted into the scene of Saint Petersburg  Square. We also had a local costumer make a replica of the dress that Hannah Amelia Croscup was wearing in one of the panels for the Croscup great-granddaughter to wear wherever “Bringing the Croscup Painted Parlour Home” would re-appear.  

Most exciting was the discovery of the painter that the National Gallery continues to claim as “unknown”. None of the panels were signed and the National Gallery had found no similar paintings amongst all the collections they had searched. A grand-daughter of Hannah Croscup showed me a tin-type of the painter (according to her family) and internet searching confirmed that this gentleman had indeed come to Nova Scotia as a navy ensign, precisely in the 1840’s when they had established that the paintings had been done. The National Gallery actually had a photocopy of this tintype but apparently ignored the provenance claimed by the Croscup great-grand-daughter. The curator from the National Gallery who came to the opening of our pop-up exhibit was pleased with our efforts, but the National Gallery has not revised their interpretation accordingly.

When I needed a distraction from everything else I followed the strange and unlikely story told by Charlotte Perkins in her The Romance of Old Annapolis Royal of an enterprising Clara Sabean from Granville Ferry in the 1870’s becoming a swimming sensation in New England in the 1890’s; pretending to be born in Lambeth England as the younger sister of Agnes Beckwith; being a reclusive wife of Brandon politician/dentist; opened a grand home in Annapolis Royal as an inn; marrying a Boston musician; somehow emerging in Los Angeles, and much, much more. This was a 15 year project eventually leading to the publication of Pursuing Clara: The Mysterious and Improbable life of a Granville Ferry Girl (MooseHouse Publications, 2020).

Pursuing Clara would never have been possible without digital searching and her spending most of her life in America (where so much has been digitized). Scanning, optical character recognition, ancestry web-sites and algorithms absolutely afforded me access to Clara’s complicated life which would otherwise have been inaccessible. Mind you, more than once digital references were also misleading and I never trusted anything until I found independent references confirming it. A genealogical web-site suggesting that Clara had a son while living in Brandon, according to the Canadian census, was very exciting. This prompted me to search out the actual census return (also scanned and digitized) which confirmed the young child was the son of servants living with Clara and her Brandon politician/dentist husband. Nonetheless, I followed him as a young child who might well have collected stories and a scrapbook of Clara, but this was another dead-end.

Remembering my initial research experience with newspapers I ordered the Boston Globe on microfilm for the six months that Clara had the most hits in 1889. The microfilm reader allowed me to make digital copies of any references I might find, dramatically improving the efficiency of such research. And I found diversions and Clara ephemera that digital algorithms had not offered me. 

I have always believed in the serendipity of research and have found ways to do the same with digital communications. Not only do I “turn every page” as the old research maxim instructs but I always allowed my eyes to roam freely, invariably finding distractions that I had great patience for. Mind you the speed and efficiency of digital searching can derail the patience that I have carefully nurtured over 50+ years.  

But then I might also be one of those bumbling detectives and have more than once stumbled upon serendipity being possible with digital communications. One of my dysfunctions is trembling fingers and one day I mistyped when looking up “Clara” and found Cora Beckwith, an imitator of Clara’s. Of course, I had to follow all of Cora Beckwith’s trails (discovering her skill in recounting more than 40 people she saved from drowning) making for another chapter in my book. 

Pursuing Clara absolutely confirmed me as historical detective and the ‘Goon Club’ of Granville Ferry, ‘Granville Fireside Industries’ and Roop Parker (patriarch of Granville Ferry’s “Africville”) are ongoing “pursuits” that I am following these days. Whether it was TCA Flight 831, the 1913 film Evangeline, Clara Sabean / Beckwith / McInnes / Miller or dozens of other more obscure and narrow topics, I became world expert in them though always prided myself on being open to being “debunked” and being wrong. 

The Wikipedia page on TCA Flight 831 invited further submissions and I took it upon myself to offer Wikipedia what we had learned. We had spent a week with the 13 boxes of the Commission of Inquiry at Library and Archives Canada (undoubtedly the first and perhaps the last to do so) and knew more than anyone would ever want to know. An innocent mistake we discovered on the Wikipedia page was listing my highschool friend’s mother, not his father, as being killed in the crash (according to the Winnipeg Free Press). I corrected this and added much further detail about the other victims from families with whom we had been in touch. I followed Wikipedia protocols as closely as I understood them, but 48 hours after I had added to the entry my additions were deleted. Apparently I had not understood Wikipedia’s requirements and had no editor to guide me (or to learn from). I expect that my “mistake” was citing the Library and Archives Canada collection which was not digitized. Wikipedia apparently requires its sources to be available on the internet, as is the Winnipeg Free Press and rejects sources that will never be digitized.

I continue to rely on Wikipedia and other web-sites daily in my ongoing research projects but have become wary of trusting any single web-site for anything. An assignment that I offered my students was to check out the World Wide Web for their high school class (or anything they knew well) to begin to understand the errors and misconceptions that “crowd-curating” can invent and perpetuate. 

Being Canadian

Becoming public servants (always correcting anyone who called it the “civil service”) was a great satisfaction for both Nance and myself, and our parents. Nance working as secretary at the House of Commons afforded us access to the West Block cafeteria (and a few times even the Parliamentary Restaurant in the Centre Block). We had a fifth-floor apartment five blocks from Parliament Hill during the October Crises in 1970 when militant Quebecois separatists kidnapped a British diplomat and Deputy Premier of Quebec, and the War Measures Act was invoked. I checked out Parliament Hill every day in my walk to and from the Canadian Catholic Conference where I was then working. I took satisfaction in soldiers and armoured vehicles discreetly stationed in parking lots few knew about as opposed to the guns prominent everywhere in Washington in those days. 497 people were arrested and detained and the Deputy Premier of Quebec was murdered, but we were largely oblivious to all of this (being married all of four months).

The next event that I will always remember was the final game of the 1972 Canada-Russia hockey series that was an early live broadcast via satellite. We didn’t have our own TV and had watched a few periods in crowded taverns in Ottawa. I was working on some research project in the National Library of Canada during the broadcast of the final game where staff had brought their televisions from home (televisions in 1972 being the size and weight of a couple of “two-fours” of beer). They were watching the final game on televisions in the stacks and the very austere librarian in charge that day announced to the reading room when the score was tied. I hurried down the Sparks Street Mall and found a television available in the lobby of the Royal Bank of Canada (where I did my banking) and was able to see Paul Henderson’s goal for myself, amongst the hundred or so watching here.

Then I embraced the opportunity to become “biligualized” because I considered French an essential Canadian quality. I volunteered to enter French-language training as soon as I became a public servant. The federal government was offering federal employees the opportunity of becoming bilingual in a French-language school which they had just established. Bilingualism was so new in the 1970’s that they were having difficulty getting public servants to sign up, but I was eager. I was tested for my proficiency in learning a second language and was found deficient. But I was accepted because few were as enthusiastic as I was. Our teachers were all Quebecois and insisted that we were going to learn “joual” rather than continue the high-school “Parisien” French that some may have had. On that score I had an advantage because I did not know a word of French of any sort. The immersion program they were trying out worked wonderfully for me and I came home with complete sentences without knowing verbs, tenses or all the other complications of language. 

My first working experience of bilingualism was Leo LaClare, a Franco-Manitoban running the Sound Archives when I first began working for the Public Archives of Canada in 1972. His non-political ease with both languages afforded me a powerful model of how to treat language and Acadian friends and neighbours here in Nova Scotia have continued that wonderful bilingualism where you never know what language they might be using for their next verse or defamation. I never claim anything of the similar comfort in both languages but always spoke French every day for the next 25 years every chance I had. And still to this day have Quebecois and Acadians complementing me on my colloquial use of French.

My first mentor in “archiving”, Leo LaClare had searched out the earliest surviving sound recording attributed to the explorer, Henry Morton Stanley in 1888.  He determined that it was actually Lord Stanley of Stanley Cup fame. His example in rehabilitating the Canadian past became my mission and friends have heard more of this than even this memoir includes.

Growing up on a farm in southwestern Ontario in the 1950’s was not great preparation for working at the National Film, Television and Sound Archives where I landed eventually. We had not attended Saturday afternoon movies and did not even have television for the first 10 years or so. We listened to the radio for weather and farm prices on CBE (the CBC station in Windsor) because we needed Canadian weather and Canadian farm prices.  

Dad did give close attention to Max Ferguson doing his daily spoof of the news where he would create characters such as “Marvin Mellowbell” commenting on events of the day, and we were required to be quiet for this. I now realize that this began my appreciation for the gentle satire of Canadian affairs that continued with “The Royal Canadian Air Farce” in the early 1970’s and can still be heard on “This Hour Has 22 Minutes”.

“Going Down the Road” was the first Canadian film I ever watched in 1970 because it was Nance’s story of coming to southwestern Ontario to find work in 1966 after graduating from Acadia University. Once I was working at the National Film, Television and Sound Archives I was searching out feature films of Canada and appreciated titles such as “Kamouraska” (1973), “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz” (1974) and began searching out vintage titles whenever they might be re-issued or shown on television. I came to understand how long Canada had been trying to make films, without any notice or success until the 1970’s. I have always had particular appreciation for Canadian feature films not following American models and consider the dark comedy, “Bon Cop – Bad Cop” (2006) with its delightful combining of French and English habits, language and instincts my favourite Canadian film. Its sequel in 2017 (“Bon Cop – Bad Cop 2”) where they confound American justice is a perfect commentary on America “exceptionalism” to my thinking.

Preserving Canadian radio and television was unprecedented in the mid 1970’s for most everyone and we searched out anyone that might share our concerns. First, John Twomey, teaching at Ryerson; and then Howard Fink, John Jackson, and Mary Vipond at Concordia; Mary Jane Miller at Brock University; Pierre Page and Rene Legris at the University of Montreal and Paul Rutherford at the University of Toronto were determined to study our broadcast heritage and became great friends. We together created the Association for the Study of Canadian Radio and Television and had broadcasters, archivists and academics talking to each other. Then, and maybe even more today, academics talk only to other academics; broadcasters talk to the world and archivists/librarians do more listening than talking. Our conversations, meetings and publications were lively and useful for all of us, but our lack of academic rigour caused the demise of this forum.

Working as a sound and moving image archivist I began watching documentaries and very quickly developed an appreciation for the National Film Board and everything it had been doing since 1939. Particularly, Donald Brittain’s documentaries of history beginning with his “Fields of Sacrifice” (1964) on World War I and then revisiting notables from Norman Bethune to Leonard Cohen, Hal Banks, Malcom Lowry, Mackenzie King and, of course, Rene Levesque and Pierre Trudeau, I watched with great reverence, and continue to hold in great esteem.

We all watched the Ken Burns series, “The Civil War” in 1990 and admired the ambition and grandeur of his documentaries.  I was pleased to be able to find for the Ken Burns research team films of 1960s’ “World Series” games in CBC vaults that did not exist in the US and eventually used my pass to visit the Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame where we sent them.

Naturally I watched all of Ken Burns’ series very closely, finding the series “Jazz” his best because of its wide range of archival footage (which he always uses with great sensitivity). But his baseball series did bring to light a fundamental flaw of Ken Burns, at least from my Canadian perspective. It was broadcast in September 1994, the year major league baseball players were on strike, and the Ken Burns introduction offering baseball as a metaphor for everything that was right in America rang hollow. Or at least it did to me!

Over the last 25 years, I have faithfully watched the admirable Ken Burns documentaries with some distance and am realizing over and over again that he is not always asking the questions of the past that need to be asked. Particularly watching the “Country Music” series while interviewing Vic Mullen, the venerable country and bluegrass musician of the past 70 years, I realized that Ken Burns was avoiding the “awkwardness’s” that country music sometimes stumbled onto over the years.

Similarly with the most recent Ken Burns documentary “Mohammad Ali” one has to welcome his embracing of Cassius Clay becoming Mohammad Ali in these days of “Black Lives Matter”, even if this 2021 documentary does become another cheerleader for American “exceptionalism”.

I certainly watched every PBS celebration of the American past with great attention (even if their interminable fund-raising appeals make commercials on CBC television welcome in comparison). But I invite anyone to compare any of these with anything Canadian television does retrospectively. The very best of American retrospective programming relies on the curiosity of celebrity whereas the most modest of Canadian retrospective programming is curious about the past for its own sake.  “Jubilee Years” (45 episodes from 1992 to 1994) and “From the Vaults” in 2018 are excellent examples, but you will have difficulty finding them because they are not repeated endlessly as is Ken Burns programming or the PBS specials. Indeed, I understand that CBC management may be somewhat embarrassed with the substantial audiences retrospective programming often gains compared to their inventions for the broadcast audience.

In the spring of 1992, I was watching the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles from the Miami Dade library while participating in a seminar on the archiving of television news. These riots, eventually killing 63, were the first example of citizen video capturing police brutality. Our seminar shifted its agenda and we watched much of the coverage of these riots from downtown Miami where sympathetic demonstrations were expected. On our final session on Sunday morning the riots were over and shops were being reopened. America was celebrating America getting back to work and even the New York Times did not print a list of victims on its Sunday morning edition that weekend. I very cautiously offered the usual Canadian response to tragedy, remembering those who died.   

“Come from Away,” (the Toronto-based musical of 2013 telling the story of Gander, Newfoundland sheltering passengers and planes when air traffic was grounded during 9/11), becoming a success on Broadway, and now being re-made as a film, is a quintessential Maritime-Canadian story. I was teaching at Saint Mary’s University the year of 9/11 and remember students coming to class with their stories of connecting with passengers downed in Halifax. Indeed, there may have been as many planes put down in Halifax as in Gander but here they could get home to the US by renting cars or even buses, and they were never as predominant as they certainly were in Gander.

CBC television immediately began doing documentaries on Maritimers sheltering Americans and in 2009 a dramatic mini-series, “Diverted” told the Gander Newfoundland story. It is a modest Canadian story with modest production budget but it is all the more authentic for that. However, no one heard of the Gander story in 9/11 until a Sheridan College production was presented in the US where it has become the longest-running Canadian production ever on Broadway. Friends were pleased to tell me that they had travelled to New York City to take in this Maritime story of compassion and empathy, thereby being good Canadians?

Then my serendipitous local history research stumbled onto an outrageous possibility that the world’s first documentary began here in the Annapolis Basin. As with all media, film took a couple of decades to invent itself and “Nanook of the North” with Robert Flaherty filming the Inuit in northern Canada in 1919 has long been considered the world’s first documentary. For generations, every film student everywhere has watched “Nanook of the North”, though in recent years Flaherty’s construction of the “primitiveness” of the Inuit has been discredited. Almost a decade before Flaherty made his northern visit, Frederick William Wallace was travelling on schooners under sail from Digby, Nova Scotia, fishing on the Grand Banks and photographing this dying practice. On his last trip in 1916 Wallace was given a film camera and documented everything about the fishery, calling his film “Seaman Courageous”. Local fisherman approved of his film but then “Seaman Courageous” was lost before it went into distribution. Wallace being a writer and the great chronicler of the age of sail in the 20th century wrote about his experiences and the making of “Seaman Courageous” for the rest of his life (and hundreds of his still photographs survive at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax). His autobiography, The Roving Fisherman, convinces me that Wallace did not ask the fishermen on these trips to enact anything. This suggests that “Seaman Courageous” may be a more legitimate documentary than “Nanook of the North”, though no historian or film-maker has taken up my persistent invitation to tell this wonderful Canadian story.  

When doing my 2022 “Ontario farewell tour” I had the opportunity to finally visit the Baseball and Basketball Hall of Fame in travelling through New York State. In preparation I was telling friends of the accomplishments of the “Edmonton Grads”, the women’s basketball team that dominated basketball from 1924 to 1940 (and still holds the record for the best winning percentage of any women’s sports team in North America). Telling this story to my Connecticut friends reminded me to forgo visiting the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, as I might well have become indignant at their ignoring this story. 

I was similarly cautious about the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown (given the stats and betting opportunities we are getting in baseball coverage these days), but ventured down the lovely drive from Herkimer to Cooperstown early on a June morning. I had a lovely time at the Baseball Hall of Fame, appreciating how baseball was integrated into American life over the centuries and stopping to watch each of the impromptu games of “catch” fathers were having with their sons. Fortunately, I forgot that the first recorded game of baseball in North America took place on June 4th 1838 in Beachville, Ontario (eight years before “New York Nine” defeated the “New York Knicerbockers”  23-1 in four innings). And am promising myself to visit our own baseball of fame in Saint Mary’s on my next trip towards southwestern Ontario.

Being Canadian, many of us fall into the habit of needing American confirmation of our achievements before we believe in them ourselves. Our usual Canadian deference to American accomplishments cautions against daring to challenge American superiority. Looking back at my earliest essays I realize that I was identifying and lamenting this Canadian instinct early on. I have had great fun in correcting this Canadian deference in my listening, remembering, researching, archiving, curating and animating the past, though admit that I may have sometimes become tiresome in the process.

Epilogue

This memoir following all the stories the past has to offer was a theme I hit upon when Dad had me invited to address the community historical society where I grew up (the Essex-Kent Mennonite Historical Society), perhaps mid-way in my career. My emphasis was on ALL because I have had abundant experience of museums/archives ignoring or rejecting something because they didn’t have space (or because someone was not interested that day). 

I always speak of ALL the stories of the past because our understanding of history is always evolving and always finding new themes to follow. I have taken great satisfaction in finding and appreciating the past that others ignored and forgotten, and this memoir has certainly indulged my doing so.

I have always followed stories rather than the dates and names that genealogists are fastidious and zealous with. Stories are deep inside us (whether we realize it or not) and motivate and form us maybe even more profoundly than the DNA that has become fashionable in the 21st century. Whether aspirational or cautionary, celebratory or angry, our stories offer insight and truth (if we listen to them). Even when repeated incessantly (as I can sometimes do) or forgotten (as we all do), or even reinvented (as few will admit), stories are our life-blood, and this memoir unapologetically offers my stories of the past.

Admittedly, it is presumptuous to claim to “follow all the stories of the past” and hope that offering this keeps me open to an evolving understanding of the past. This is my way of admitting that we may never capture truth in pursuing history, even if we are always striving for honesty. 

Someone, somewhere, observed that I was never a “follower” in anything and admit that “pursuing” more appropriately describes my approach to life. I was an organizer of anything from a basketball practice to a family outing (invariably visiting museums along the way); these days organizing the records of the Granville Ferry Hall association.  

My impertinence in asking my questions of anybody, anywhere, anytime, is a long-time habit that has been welcomed from King Gordon in Rockcliffe Park to my neighbours on the Granville Road. “Pursuing” then may well be the right word for this memoir.

Working with the past has always been joyful for me and from mid-career on I began to equally experience the “hazards” of the past. Now, moving beyond my “three-score and ten” I treasure those “awkwardness’s” that the past invites every bit as much as the celebrations, so this has sometimes been a bumpy journey.

An occupational hazard of working with the past in so many different ways, for so many years, is you assume ownership of the past, whether you admit to it or not.  Certainly I considered the ghosts at the Sinclair Inn and the Perkins House “my” ghosts and unabashedly wrote a scenario for a play and film for “my” Clara to protect her from anyone else having their way with her. I also became authoritative in claiming that the 1914 “Evangeline” and 1919 “Seaman Courageous” were lost, and undoubtedly much else. Then, David Folster’s life-long affection and research for Discovering the Movies in New Brunswick was published in 2021, and reminded me that there is lots I do not know.  I do hope that I can keep remembering this! 

Offering a memoir to the world is not easy after a life-time of listening, remembering, archiving, researching and curating for others. I am not pretending that my stories are seminal or even important; but that is the great empowerment of a memoir (they do have to be)! But, I can guarantee that they are mine, and certainly look forward to amplifying any for anybody needing more detail.

Perhaps the ultimate hazard of working with history is that we eventually become irrelevant in the 21st century with its reliance on digital communications. Elders have often become irrelevant, but somehow I believed that my experience of the past would immunize me from irrelevance. Writing this memoir is my feeble attempt to combat this irrelevance  but may also confirm that I have not escaped this fate.

Another title I was considering was “Building Bridges Between the Past and the Future”.  Whether in archiving, curating, interviewing or publishing (or simply in conversation) I always saw myself as connecting people, whether they wanted to be connected or not. Admittedly I could be impertinent in doing so and may not always been as constructive as I imagined. Hence, I offer the world a memoir, admittedly an exercise in self-justification, but maybe also sometimes, fortifying the bridges that I thought I was building.

Now this memoir would never have made it this far without the encouragement of James Morrison, historian at Saint Mary’s University and oral historian to everybody; Tom Nesmith, colleague back at the Public Archives of Canada and long-time leader and philosopher of archival education in Canada; Dick Gordon, neighbour, fellow cross-country skier and colleague at CBC; and Hansel Cook, archivist for Saint Mary’s University, never refusing all the archival boxes I keep bringing him. 

Finishing a memoir is more than a little intimidating because I am not sure that I can bring myself to end it.   Further stories, insights, complaints, diversions and memories invariably come to mind and maybe should be included.  My strategy is to announce further memoirs with potential working titles being “Pursuing Curiosities of the Annapolis Basin” or “Following the Granville Road” which are celebrations of my being maritimer.  Then maybe I will offer “Pursuing Athletic Diversions: From our Sandy Acres farm,  to Briggs Stadium in the Detroit ghetto, to Footy in Melbourne Australia, to the North Mountain overlooking the Bay of Fundy”. A final memoir, (I promise) might be “Pursuing Authenticity” though expect that it may never be finished. My memoirs are necessary for me to understand my own life, nothing more, but also nothing less.

My final words are derived from the venerable basketball coach, John Wooden, “It is what you learn after you know it all that counts”. Or as Albert Einstein put it“As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.”  Any of us living, working and playing with the past knows this very well! 

September 2022

Ernest J. Dick, Granville Ferry,

Publications by Ern Dick;

Pursuing Clara:  The Mysterious, and Improbable girl from Granville Ferry, MooseHouse, 2020

Silver Hair and Golden Voice: Austin Willis from Halifax to Hollywood, Nimbus, 2020

Voices from a Forgotten Tragedy:  Trans-Canada Flight 831, self-published, 2013

“Our Search for Memory:  Flight/Vol TCA 831 – Ste-Therese, Quebec, November 29, 1963” 2010 (DVD multi-media publication)

“Moving Images of the Annapolis Basin”, 2008 (available on Gorsebrook Website, Saint Mary’s University)

Remembering Singalong Jubilee,  Formac, 2004

Archival column for “Playback”, 1996 – 1999.

Courage, Courage, the Lord will Help – family history of Johann Duck, self-published 1989

Beyond the printed word…newsreel and broadcast reporting in Canada, 1897-1987, 1988, National Archives of Canada

Guide to CBC Sources at the Public Archives, 1987, Public Archives of Canada

Ern J. Dick

Ernest (Ern) J. Dick is an archivist, curator, interviewer, author, historical detective and student of sound and the moving image. He was originally from a fruit and vegetable farm in south-western Ontario, worked for the Public Archives of Canada and as Corporate Archivist of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Ottawa, and has been living in Granville Ferry, Nova Scotia for the past 25 years.

2 Comments

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