2025 marks 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 is launching a special interview series to spotlight the voices, experiences, and insights of ACA members past and present through intergenerational conversations. Students and emerging professionals will 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, Carolyn Smith chats with Catherine Bailey for an insightful conversation.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your experience in the archival field.

Catherine: I have been a member of ACA for many years. Originally from Edmonton, I completed my training at the UBC archival studies program from 1986 to 1988. Following that, I moved to Ottawa to accept a position at the then-National Archives of Canada, intending to only stay a few years. 30 years later I retired from Library and Archives Canada after being a government records archivist the whole time. I am now a retired archivist living in Ottawa, though I remain actively involved with the ACA through my work with Archivaria and the Records Management Working Group.

In essence, that summarizes my 36-year professional journey.

Can you tell us about your first experience with the ACA? What drew you to become a member?

Catherine: I joined the ACA quite some time ago—back in 1985, when I was a summer student working as an archival assistant at the Provincial Archives of Alberta in my hometown of Edmonton. That year, the 10th annual ACA conference was being held there. Brian Speirs served as the program chair and Jean Dryden as the local arrangements chair, and both were wonderfully encouraging to the summer students. They urged us to get involved and to attend the plenary session.

By that point, I already knew I was going to be an archivist—it was clear to me even then—so I was very eager to participate. I no longer remember exactly what the plenary was about, but I do remember enjoying it and wanting to continue being involved. The following year I applied to the Master of Archival Studes program at UBC and when I got there, Terry Eastwood was incredibly encouraging about becoming involved with the ACA. We also had a lot of encouragement from Hugh Taylor, who was a visiting professor in my first term. And honestly, the passion that those two had for the archives and ACA was a powerful source of positive reinforcement and further inducement to get involved.

My first experience with a full ACA conference was in Hamilton in 1987, themed “Archives in the Information Age.” At the time, I was specializing in what were then referred to as machine-readable records. I found the entire conference was really exciting, especially being able to meet, in person, many of the archival figures that I had just spent a year reading about in great detail. I met people like Terry Cook, Harold Naugler and Jay Atherton and countless others.

That was also when I discovered the East–West softball game, and from that moment, I was hooked—I was fully in. That was my first direct involvement with ACA, just as a conference participant. But after that I started to get more involved. Once I got to the National Archives of Canada, there were a lot of people there who worked with the ACA and were very encouraging. I thought, well, I'll just start volunteering – and so I did.

How has your work as an archivist evolved over the course of your career, and what role has the ACA played in that journey?

Catherine: Full disclosure: apart from the four summers I spent working at the Provincial Archives of Alberta, I spent my entire career as a federal government records archivist at National Archives and Library and Archives Canada. That experience shaped my perception about my work and how it evolved.

I would say that overall, I don’t believe the fundamental nature of archival work—the core principles and underlying practices—has changed significantly over the years. What has changed though, is how we go about applying those principles and the specific methods we use in practice.

I did a lot of thinking about this, and for me, the development and implementation of macro appraisal based on functional analysis, that was a game changer. I've often said it's a rare treat for a recent graduate in archival studies, particularly one who's been immersed in learning appraisal theory, to walk right into a testing ground for a new approach. But that's what happened to me.

Since I joined the National Archives not long after the findings of the DeschênesRoyal Commission were released—the commission that investigated the destruction of immigration records potentially containing information about Nazi war criminals—I witnessed firsthand how profoundly those findings reshaped archival practice.

The findings of the Deschênes Commission were a very, very significant game changer for government records appraisal practices, particularly in terms of processes and documentation.

In terms of the practice, at the time I joined, appraisal had been largely based on trying to identify the secondary value of records, which is following what Schellenberg had outlined. When I was reading about appraisal in school, that made sense to me. But once I began examining actual records—under specific instructions to assess them and make recommendations about how they might be used in the future and by whom—I realized that it was often quite straightforward to identify a record’s secondary value.

In fact, it soon occurred to me that everything has a secondary value to somebody for something. And if you kept on doing this for government records you were going to get a tsunami of archival records. I think it took me about two years of shifting from the, “oh this is really cool, we need to preserve it” to “there's an awful lot of records here, is there a good reason this should not be disposed of”?

Shortly after I started working, macro appraisal was starting to be developed. As it was articulated and refined over the coming years, I'd say it had strengths and weaknesses. But overall, I thought it was a good means of dealing directly with exponential record growth and it didn't matter what the format was, because at the same time, it was preserving key archival principles and practices.

To a certain extent, this approach also helped us manage the growing pressures of budget cuts and staff reductions. That said, conducting extensive research with increasingly limited personnel was both time‑consuming and challenging. These constraints were not unique to us; many of our colleagues across the country, in institutions of all sizes, were facing the same realities. Eventually, even in the latter part of my career, I'd say about the last five or six years, events pushed us to think even more strategically in terms of macro appraisal and disposition and actually come to accept the component of risk management and reappraisal as being essential parts of government records programs. I'd have to say that neither one of those two concepts was easy to embrace, but it was a very, very necessary evolution for the kind of archival work that we were carrying out.

We come to the second part of that question, which is, what role did the ACA play in this evolutionary journey? And I think it's fair to say that although the approach started and was centered at the National Archives, the evolution of macro appraisal was playing out regularly and very publicly within the context of the ACA. Year in, year out, we had spirited debates at conference sessions, in workshops, at special interest section meetings, and of course, we had articles in Archivaria.

For me, the Association has been an integral part of my world for more than three decades. The ACA has been a very important part of my own personal journey. I was reflecting on this, when I retired from LAC and I got my chance to stand up in front of all my colleagues. I had an opportunity to thank them for their support and encouragement over the years, and I talked to them about how that support allowed me to not only thrive professionally but have some great experiences and develop important skills that touched every part of my life. That applies equally to my own work in the ACA community. Quite simply, I don't think I would have been the archivist that I was, or the person that I am today, without the work and the experiences I've had in ACA.

I've said many times that being an archivist isn't a job. It's a calling. And when you have a calling and you find other people who have the same calling, what you end up with is a community. Communities are very useful, very helpful and very supportive.

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

Catherine: You know, I thought about this a lot. I thought, hmm, I have a lot of really good ones. If somebody gets me going, we could be here for a really, really, really long time. So, I'll just try to pick out a few that I think might resonate. First and foremost, for me, it's anything to do with working on Archivaria. I’ve been involved with the journal in some capacity ever since I began my career as an archivist at the National Archives. I believe my involvement began around issue number 29. And since we're up to number 100 right now, that is a really, really, really long time. I know that journal very well—almost inside out—because over the years I’ve done everything from coordinating the teams of volunteer archives staff who proofread the galleys, all the way to serving as General Editor, along with many roles in between.

I am especially proud of the work I contributed to e-Archivaria. I was the technical coordinator behind the scenes working on setting up the platform and under the direction of general editors, Barbara Craig, and particularly Bob McIntosh, who was general editor when it launched. And there was a great deal of hard work from a lot of people, we ended up having to proofread an awful lot of scanned galleys and change the metadata right before it went live. And that wasn't what we'd planned on, but we had a lot of people step up and give us a hand at that point. We still managed to complete it on time, which was remarkable. What we produced is a truly significant archival digital resource. It is especially meaningful, in our 50th year, to have a journal that has endured for the entire half‑century and is still going strong. That is certainly something to be proud of.

Another good memory for me was co-editing the first ACA website back in 1996 and later as the editor, I took it through a full redesign in 2002. That was particularly a highlight because I'd never led such a large project before. It was a fantastic opportunity to work with a broad range of members and find out what they wanted or needed from the website and then turn those wants and needs into an honest to God reality.

I started thinking a bit more about other standout memories, and one that feels especially fitting to mention now is being in the audience in Halifax in 2010 for Terry Cook’s closing plenary session, “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: The Next Generation of Canadian Archivists. Reflections and Prospects,” which was the last ACA talk he gave.

As was so often the case with Terry, the session was thoughtful and inspiring. He spoke about the passing of the torch across the various generations of archivists that have brought Canadian archives to where they were in 2010 and where they would go after that. I remember being in the audience and recall a standing ovation.

It was one of those moments that made me feel genuinely proud to be part of the profession—and, at that stage of my career, to feel like I might be one of the people he was symbolically handing that torch to. And later, as I approached retirement myself, I found myself thinking it’s time for me to pass the torch on to the next generation in fine tradition. It remains a particularly meaningful memory for me.

If anyone is curious, the transcript of Terry’s speech is still accessible. Through the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, if you look at the ACA website as it appeared in June 2014, the announcement of Terry’s passing includes links to the archived version of the speech. It’s quite something to revisit.

But one real standout memory is being in the audience in Halifax for Terry Cook’s closing plenary address to ACA 2010, titled “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: The Next Generation of Canadian Archivists. Reflections and Prospects,” which was the last ACA talk he gave. Thoughtful and inspiring, as I recall it earned him a standing ovation as he urged the passing of the torch from one generation of archivists to another, and I often thought of his words when I was nearing the end of my own career.

If you’re interested, you can find the transcript on the old ACA Website in the Internet Archive from June 2014.

In your view, what have been the most significant changes in the archival profession in Canada over the past 50 years?

Catherine: There's been an awful lot of them, but I must admit that when I was reading Terry Eastwood's blog interview, he pointed out the development of pre-appointment education for archivists and I would have to say when I was thinking about it, I had to agree. Although, of course, I'm slightly biased because I'm a rather early-ish product of that education.I do believe that having multiple graduate programs available—regardless of their individual emphases or the varied backgrounds of the students who enter them—provides an essential common ground for the profession. That shared foundation of core knowledge and understanding ultimately strengthens the archival field as a whole. It filled a gap and it gave common language to a lot of new people starting in the profession.

What's significant for me, is that the comfort level with digital technology and digital records has increased dramatically.When I started out, I wrote my thesis on electronic records and there was a wonderful quote from Trudy Huskamp Peterson that I used in my thesis. I'm paraphrasing, but it was something like “many of us would like to perhaps retire before the monster in our midst on machine readable records”. I understood that perspective at the time, but that is no longer the case. Archivists have since reached out and fully embraced technology, using it effectively to gain intellectual and physical control over their holdings.

They are making excellent use of technology to make their records accessible to a wide range of users. The generation of archivists that has followed mine also seems far more willing to invest the necessary time and energy into preserving digital records—with varying degrees of success, and they’re not so worried about getting digital preservation perfect the first time. I find this very encouraging, because my sense is that we spent an enormous amount of time strategizing, discussing, and debating how we were going to approach digital preservation, yet we made comparatively little concrete progress. Perhaps we were worried about making mistakes. I mean, I certainly felt that way for some things, but I think that there has been a fundamental shift. People just get out and deal with it now. This is a game changer.

There is one more significant change I’ve observed over the past 50 years: the growing emphasis on advocacy for archives as a vital societal resource. Increasingly, archivists and archival institutions are asserting the importance of archival records as essential evidence for holding governments and organizations accountable. This is coupled with a drive for deeper community engagement and having archival collections that reflect very diverse groups of people and are built for the communities that have traditionally either been very outside of or very mistrusting of official repositories. And that's really, really come to the forefront, I'd say, in about the last 10 years or so. It’s fascinating to watch how this continues to unfold. I think it’s a very positive trend, and I’m genuinely interested to see where it leads next.