2025 marked the 50th anniversary of the Association of Canadian Archivists—a milestone that offers a unique opportunity to reflect on five decades of archival practice, community-building, and collective professional growth. To celebrate, the ACA Blog team has launched a special interview series to spotlight the voices, experiences, and insights of ACA members past and present through intergenerational conversations. Students and emerging professionals interview longtime members, offering a space to share personal reflections, institutional memory, and the evolving landscape of archival work in Canada.

In today's feature, Rohini Singh chats with Ian E. Wilson. This interview has been revised from its original form for clarity and accuracy.

1. The ACA turned 50 this year. As someone who was instrumental in its formation, what does being part of this 50-year history mean to you personally?

To me it is an affirmation of the profession. The formation of the ACA was a logical outcome of the developments within the archives section of the Canadian Historical Association (CHA), as well as the state of the archival profession at the time. When I was a young archival assistant at Queens University in 1967, the role and education of archivists was very vague.

A senior archivist at the Public Archives [now Library and Archives Canada] I knew told me how he read Jenkinson and Schellenberg over a weekend and by Monday called himself an archivist! Archivists were considered failed historians, with several senior archivists who ideally should have become leaders in the profession in the 1960s leaving for teaching positions at the newly established universities. We were also ignored by the CHA. In fact, I served as the chair of the archives section of the CHA but was not invited to their executive meetings. Even though the section ran a four-to-five week-long archival course at Carleton University beginning in1959, there is no mention of the archival section’s existence in the history of the CHA that came out in the 2000s.

At the 1973 annual meeting of the section we were able to organize a full day and a half of professional sessions and began to establish grounds for creating a separate association for archivists. With Anne MacDermaid we evolved the section’s annual publication, The Canadian Archivist/L’archiviste canadien, from a journal that printed reports from different archives to prepare the way for Archivaria, a publication with intellectual and analytical articles from the profession. For me the launch of the ACA was a key moment. It gave a sense of the profession, creating opportunities for anglophone archivists to meet, forming different committees, and the Archivaria is a phenomenal and internationally recognized accomplishment of that.

2. With the benefit of hindsight, is there anything you would have done differently while setting up the ACA? Do you have any regrets?

I deeply regret that we did not form a national bilingual association. We later had to create the Council of Canadian Archives to establish a suitably representative bilingual national body. But we did not have any other option. The Quebec archivists had separated themselves from the anglophone CHA in the 1960s. By the time the ACA was formed the Quebec archivists were already well organized, and they had done some great work. The Quebec archival legislation is far ahead of other provinces and is important to the development of our profession, which includes records management. The ACA, for that matter, has not really included record managers and that has limited the involvement of the larger information management community. We missed out on that, but now it's going to be more important than ever to involve them. With the planned federal budget reductions, the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is going to be heavily constrained and will need the support of a larger coalition of information professionals concerned about the long-term integrity and authenticity of records.

3. Did you, at the time of its formation, have a vision of what the Association would look like in 50 years? Has that stood the test of time?

I think it has. The ACA has grown and evolved, developed serious capabilities with respect to archival standards, and has participated internationally through the International Council of Archives since the 1980s. But as a profession, our voices are not out there. We meet every year and ask ourselves why other people and professions don’t understand the importance of what we do. I went on record at one of the ACA annual meetings in the early 2000s to say that we should not be hosting these gatherings every year. Instead of talking amongst ourselves and convincing ourselves of the righteousness of what we are doing, we should put that time and effort every other year into talking to people who might be interested in our issues like municipal administrators, political parties, universities, chamber of commerce, other organizations, etc. I skipped the ACA meetings for a few years and spent that time meeting those who could be useful allies.

In the mid-1990s, David Cameron observed that while the Symons Report of 1975 emphasised that archives are the foundation of Canadian studies the profession had made great strides except for one area: engaging the public¹. And I think the situation has become worse today. We advocated, myself included, to put more and more records online but the more we work with third-party genealogy-based organisations to make our material accessible, the less visibility and credit we get for the work we do behind the scenes. When I was a young researcher, the then Public Archives was packed with historians, and students from a wide variety of disciplines. We would exchange ideas over coffee, speak to archivists and build relations. Today, the reading rooms at the LAC are empty. We have succeeded in making more records available online but have defeated ourselves in the process. The public today may respect our profession but knows far less about us. We have lost the element of personal interaction and the challenge now is to rebuild that in a digital world.

4. What are some standout memories or milestones from your involvement with the ACA—whether at conferences, committee work, or advocacy efforts?

I have great memories of the friendships we built over the years, of sharing ideas and planning ACA meetings over coffee—or something stronger—of building networks and contacts so one knew whom to contact if faced with a problem. A lot can come out of professionals with common interests and goals coming together to accomplish something. These interactions are now facilitated over emails and Zoom, while we did it through letters.

5. You advocated for the creation of regional and community-based archives in the 1970s. What was your rationale behind this?

This was one of the ways of building public support. During my time in Kingston, Ontario, I understood that an archive with community support is far more useful and effective than a remote institution. I was active in archival acquisitions regionally while working at Queen’s University and recognized that large government archives need to work with a network of regional and local community-based archives to fulfil their mandate of representing Canadian society in all its complexity and diversity. Many agreed with me at the time as well, that the Canadian archival heritage rests with the network of 300-plus institutions across the country—not just with ones in Ottawa or in the provincial capitals. What was needed was for the government-funded ‘Total Archives’ to recognize this and share some of their funding and expertise with the local, regional, university and community-based archives; to see the fulfilment of their mandate in part through the active role of the local archives. The archivists during the 1970s would joke about “Total War amongst Total Archives”. When a prominent Canadian would die, archivists from different archives having competing jurisdictions and mandates might show up on the doorstep of the family of the deceased to acquire the records. Unbecoming!  

The 1980 SSHRC Report’s key chapter was entitled Co-operation or Competition?² The network approach would focus on ensuring that the records are being preserved, properly maintained and are accessible, whether that is happening in a small town or a small organization or in our national institution. A collaborative network of archives would be the way of ensuring that the archival records of minority groups and communities, however defined, are properly maintained. The 1980 SSHRC report recommended that this be encouraged through federal and provincial project grants. Through the Canadian Council of Archives we funded the traveling archival advisors at the provincial level who were out there assisting in setting up this network, and that was the best use of our money. They took some of the load off the provincial archives in setting up local, community-based archives.

6. Western societies all over have been critiqued for the lack of representation within and access to archives of people from non-white, heterosexual identities. What are your views on the degree of inclusivity and representation within Canadian archives? At a time when BIPOC and Queer communities in Canada are striving to represent their histories in their own voices, along with a focus on trauma-informed and people-centred practices, what do you think legacy institutions like the ACA can do to remain relevant in these conversations and support these efforts? 

The main thing the ACA can do is to ensure these conversations are taking place and provide an open, inclusive venue. They should also explore why certain community archives thrive while some bigger institutional archives struggle with working with certain communities. There are certain groups that don’t want to work with government organizations that offer to provide archival services because they are suspicious of the government’s intentions, and what they will do with those records. Rather than asking different groups and communities to give their records, the big government archives need to ask themselves how they could build their internal capabilities to serve those groups and communities. And, as I have mentioned, project grants are essential to encourage community-based efforts and the experience has been that these grants leverage extraordinary voluntary efforts.  There needs to be an exchange of best practices and perspectives on what is the archive’s role; on how to attract students from different backgrounds to the archival studies programs who can then share their perspectives and study archival development seriously. This is where the ACA and the Archivaria can come in as platforms that support these explorations.

7. Sir Arthur Doughty has been someone you are deeply interested in. What in your understanding of Doughty, the person, has helped you understand his choices and decisions as Sir Arthur, the Dominion Archivist?

Doughty was an artist, personable, creative and passionate about the role of archives in developing a national awareness of our past. I became curious about how he became an archivist. That might be the next article I write. Most biographical dictionaries do not mention his educational background and what he did in the U.K. before moving to Canada in 1886. He adopted what he called a “scientific approach” to history—that if two historians were given the same documents then they would write the same historical narrative. That was naïve of him, for we now know that is not possible, but that is what he and his generation believed. At the same time, his own publications and writings were in an older style of romantic, grand storytelling with the heroes, the clash of armies at Quebec, the flags flying and the drums beating. In the 1908 celebrations of the Quebec Tercentenary he helped stage the pageantry on the Plains of Abraham. He started the documentary art collections of landscapes and portraits that are today in the national archives. He drew upon the technology of his time, publishing extensive volumes of documents and using glass lantern slides to make the archives’ growing holdings of documentary art available to schools across the country. In the process, he linked the archives directly to the central priorities of successive governments. The archives became the focus of nascent federal cultural policy and provided practical support for the development of the Canadian historical profession. The archives thrived and I have sought to learn from Doughty’s approach: his successes and limitations. In the course of my career I have worked at a senior level with 2 NDP governments, 3 Conservative and 2 Liberal governments. In every case, the challenge was that of Doughty: how to relate archival development to the concerns and priorities of shifting political perspectives. 

8. Your paper “A Noble Dream” highlights the efforts it took to build the Public Archives of Canada and a Eurocentric historiography of Canada. Do you have any thoughts about the critiques of this process of deliberately constructing a historical account that centres the narrative of the white settlers who built a nation on land stolen from Indigenous nations, and the complicity of the archives in that process?

“A Noble Dream” only deals with the development of the Public Archives up to the end of Doughty’s tenure in 1935. But a key point is that from its earliest days, our national archives broke from the Eurocentric model of a national repository, focused solely on the official record. Brymner did not have a mandate to deal with official records and cast a broad net in securing records from a variety of sources. This gave the archives flexibility over the decades in seeking out other sources as it sought to document Canada society. In my meetings with European colleagues, I found considerable interest in Canadian initiatives seeking to be inclusive in our acquisition approaches and in efforts to open archival research to all. Canada has not followed a European model in developing its national archives but with the archival system has tried an approach to archival service adapted to the needs of our society.  

Archives do not exist outside of place and time. They are, largely established by governments and institutions which provide their mandates, facilities and funding. In terms of acquisitions, for government archives, the selection and preservation of official records is obligatory while the acquisition of private materials is discretionary. And the archives, whatever its ambitions, is limited by the resources it has available and by the abilities of its management to link the archives, its needs and outcomes, to the priorities of its funding body. At its best, the archival system in its holdings should endeavour to seek out records which hold a mirror to Canadian society, warts and all. What historians and other authors do with this record in constructing national historical narratives rests in their hands.  

While there have been scholarly studies of the writing of Canadian history, I am not aware of any that have looked at the relationship over the decades between the evolving historiography and the availability of relevant archival resources. But I have been struck, sometimes pleasantly surprised by how the routine consistent application of archival selection criteria to the official record has not emphasised specific topics but has resulted in the archival acquisition of the records reflecting the decisions and actions spanning the wide range of governmental interests. As research interests shifted from constitutional and economic issues, to social and labour history, to women’s and gender studies and the treatment of minorities and, too slowly, to the treaties, education and the rights of Indigenous peoples, extensive records were available--a foundation on which to build. And the archival system has and continues to respond, documenting achievements and failures, pride and regrets and actively contributing, increasingly online, to the remembered past on which the future is being built.  

9. Looking ahead, what do you hope the ACA will prioritize or continue to build upon in the next 50 years? 

There is still a lot of work to be done, especially now with immediate challenges like the looming budget cuts. It is important for us to think about how to represent the profession when reaching out to allies. Archivists have allies, if only we go out and talk to them. Now is the time to inform, engage with and enlist them, especially those who share our concerns about the integrity and authenticity of the records. It is time to take risks and move out of our ‘comfort zone’.  This support then needs to be made politically and publicly explicit. There is a lot of intrinsic support once people understand what we do and the impact we have on Canadian society. Someone like Charlotte Gray, an insightful historian who is writing in the Globe and Mail supporting archives, and others in the historical research community who are strong supporters. How can we turn this support into awareness and funding for Canadian archives It’s important for all of our institutions to have that kind of visible support and recognition.  

Some years ago the head of the federal public service issued a challenge to the public service. It applies to archives today: INNOVATE, COLLABORATE and ADVANCE WITH COURAGE.

Footnotes:

1. David Cameron. "Taking Stock: Canadian Studies in the Nineties," Association of Canadian Studies (1996).  Commenting on implementation of the recommendations of: T.H.B. Symons. To Know Ourselves: The Report of the Commission of Canadian Studies. Vols 1 & 2. (Ottawa, Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, 1975) 

2. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Canadian Archives. Ottawa. 1980. excerpts are available online at www.ianewilson.ca/publications