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Canadian Archives: Patterns Porn a Federal Perspective

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Canadian Archives: Patterns Porn a Federal Perspective Canadian Archives: Patterns porn a Federal Perspective More than 115 years have passed since the government of Nova Scotia appointed the first provincial archivist in Canada. The centennial of the Public Archives of Canada has come and gone. In the years following 1872, Canadian archival institutions developed in a manner characteristic of this country and in sharp contrast to archival development in the United States of America. At the 1974 Conference of the Society of American Archivists held in Toronto, a session was devoted to "Strategies for documenting national cultures: a cross national comparison" .' What has been the general shape of the emerging archival strategy in Canada? What problems do archivists and users of archives across Canada have in common? What might be our strategy for the future? In 1967, when the Society of American Archivists last visited Canada, we were all busy celebrating one hundred years of life under the British North America Act with a declared objective of "peace, order and good government". This goal, in striking contrast to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" favoured by our American colleagues, was an all important factor in the development of archives in Canada. But what were the hallmarks of this "good government" a hundred years ago? A quick response might be "peace" in a united Canada, and "order" through the I This article derives from a paper given at the annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists in Toronto, October 1974. The session for which the original version of this paper was prepared, was designed to contrast archival development and strategies between Canada and the United States of America, requiring a search for those patterns of initiative and relationship which have shaped the ~anadiantradition. For ~gnadian archivists, any future strategy must be an extension of this experience as a point of departure. I make no claim to original research and my interpretations, conclusions and projections may not always survive closer examination. I hope, however, to stimulate debate in view of a possible Canadian Congress on Archives in the autumn of 1978. My hypotheses should not be accepted uncritically, and if my viewpoint is largely federal that is where I now stand, conscious of my limited vision and inviting a response from others. Archivaria, Vol. I no 2 1976 a All rights reserved. continuity of traditional attitudes and values supported by a government, not always very democratic, but deeply rooted in custom and case law, and grounded in the evidence recorded in parliament, the church, the courts of law and other valuable and comforting, if occasionally ponderous, institutions. Furthermore, internal peace and order were good for business and economic development so the concept of Confederation won general acceptance among the upper echelons of society whether of French or British origin. Moreover, for those who were interested, the records of the past were reminders of tradition, of progress, and of the origins of national unity which should be preserved for sound cultural reasons and not simply as evidence of human transactions. All this is well illustrated in the early archival history of New France and Lower Canada.2 The eighteenth and early nineteenth century was the golden age of record keepers in the old tradition, driving their quills, scattering their sand and serving well their various institutions. Following the surrender of MontrCal to the British in 1760, the administrative state papers were shipped to La Rochelle and Rochefort where they subsequently disappeared, whereas the judicial, notarial and ecclesiastical archives remained in the colony to form the nucleus of the documentary evidence for la survivance in the years to come. Family, parish and state records were regarded as cultural baggage of the first importance and as early as 1787 the governor, Lord Dorchester, appointed a commission to survey the archives of QuCbec. Under the Constitutional Act of 1791, orders-in-council were used as instruments for records preservation, a procedure which has a very modern ring. Quite apart from the continuity for archives provided by the record keepers of Qukbec, another force generated a more active concern. The aftermath of conquest brought reassessment, re-examination and explana- tion of events and institutions on a national basis for which archives provided the evidence. The Literary and Historical Society of QuCbec, founded in 1824 by Lord Dalhousie, drew most of its members from the British in QuCbec City who composed about 40% of the population. Society members were doubtless aware of the records of courts and notaries for some had purchased ancient seigneuries, in pursuit of which they would have certainly been conscious of the literary and historical value of surviving manuscripts. More importantly, perhaps, they believed their literary pursuits were circumscribed and in 1871, the Society petitioned the federal government on the grounds that Authors and literary inquirers are placed in a very disadvantageous position in this country in comparison with persons of the same class in Great Britain, France and the United States in consequence of being practically debarred from 2 The author is indebted to John Hall Archer, "A Study of Archival Institutions in Canada" (Queen's University: unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, 1969) for much of the historical background to this paper. CANADIAN ARCHIVES facilities of access to the public records, documents and official papers in manuscript illustrative of the history and progress of Society in Canada." The government responded promptly to the petition which was presented to the House by Alexander T. Galt and Joseph Howe who incidentally had been active in founding the Nova Scotia Archives 15 years earlier. Parliament voted $4,006 and appointed Douglas Brymner is archivist in 1872. Essentially, the petitioners were seeking access to material rather than conservation. Who better than a writer and a journalist such as Brymner with a background in dissemination of news and commentary to champion access to truth about the past as a complement to truth about the present? Remember that the writing of history at this time was still largely the preserve of the gifted amateur antiquary and man of letters who would soon all but disappear from this field before the onslaught of the "scientific" historians. It was an age of historical innocence unclouded by weighty matters of interpretation. Many writers believed that once the facts had been made accessible, the facts would speak for themselves-with some assistance from their prose. Indeed, if access is regarded as the main theme during these formative years for archives, then the policy of Douglas Brymner becomes clear: a vigorous copying program in Europe with the cooperation of QuCbec and the Maritimes to continue the work of Louis-Joseph Papineau and others; the acquisition of British military records for the period 1760- 187 1, about to be shipped to England, which in the days before microfilm, would have rendered them virtually inaccessible to Canadians; the opening and copying of British Colonial Office papers relating to Canada for the period 1760-1842; a survey of surviving records across Canada and the simplest possible system of arrangement and cataloguing of the acquired material for the use of the public. In the sphere of public records, an order-in-council of 1890 required a comprehensive schedule of material intended for destruction, but this unfortunately remained a dead letter. Records Keepers kept since they had not yet learned to destroy-the archivists' art of appraisal and selective retention was as yet unknown in Canada. Ten years after Brymner's appointment the incorporation of the Archives with the Library of Parliament was mooted, but no less a person than Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald averted this terrible fate! Macdonald realized that the Library and Archives had different functions and as a lawyer he would have had practical knowledge of this difference. Indeed, many years later it was the exertion of the Dominion Archivist, who was 3 Quoted in Ian E. Wilson, "Shortt and Doughty: The cultural r6le of the Public Archives of Canada, 1904- 1935", The Canadian Archivist/L'Archiviste Canadien, Vol. 2, No. 4 (1973), p. 5. 6 ARCHIVARIA also the National Librarian, that brought the National Library into being. Canadian priorities may seem a little unusual but they were crucial to the development of the Public Archives. In 1895 Brymner took the initiative in the field of historical public records which were denied to him through departmental opposition or inertia. He sent a memorandum on record keeping in Europe to Prime Minister Sir Mackenzie Bowell and urged that all public records prior to 1867 be transferred to the Archives. The Privy Council appointed a Departmental Commission but Brymner died before its recommendations were implemented. Briefly, the Commission proposed that the offices of Dominion Archivist and Keeper of the Records be held by one person and that large bodies of pre-1867 public records from various departments be transferred to the Archives. Brymner's goal is summarised in a paper read before the American Historical Association. He outlined the future development of the Archives: My ambition aims at the establishment of a great storehouse of the history of the colony and colonists in their political, ecclesiastical, industrial, domestic, in a word in every aspect of their lives . It may be a dream, but it is a noble
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