Hugh Taylor, 1920-2005, Founding Fellow 

Highlights

Internationally influential archival visionary, scholar, and educator pivotal in shaping the Canadian archival community; was founding Provincial Archivist for Alberta and New Brunswick; also Provincial Archivist for Nova Scotia; helped shape the Public Archives of Canada; chaired the Committee of the Future to establish the ACA; also helped establish Archivaria and the first Canadian post-graduate archival program; active in the professional community throughout his career and in retirement. 

Education and Background 

Hugh Alexander Taylor was born in England and served in the Royal Air Force during WWII. Following the war he received his MA in history from the University of Oxford (1953)  and took his Archives Diploma at the University of Liverpool.   

Professional Career 

Hugh Taylor’s archival career began in England, where he worked for the Leeds Public Libraries (1951-1954), Liverpool Public Libraries (1954-1958), as founding County Archivist for Northumberland (1958-1965), and concurrently as Archivist to the University Library, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1963-1965). In 1965 he came to Canada as the founding Provincial Archivist for the Provincial Archives of Alberta, moving on in 1967 to become the founding Provincial Archivist of New Brunswick. In 1971 he joined the Public Archives of Canada (PAC, now Library and Archives Canada) as Director of the Historical Branch. He quickly renamed this the Archives Branch, and established eight divisions reflecting the strength of its holdings in different media.  

In 1978, Hugh Taylor left the PAC to serve as the Provincial Archivist of Nova Scotia, retiring from that position in  1982 but remaining active in the archival community as a consultant, teacher, and writer. He initially taught at the month-long Archives Course at the National Archives of Canada and later taught for three years at the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia. 

Contributions to the Profession 

Prior to the existence of either the ACA or Archivaria, Hugh Taylor joined the Archives Section of the Canadian Historical Society (CHA), and served as editor of its journal The Canadian Archivist (1969-1972). In 1974 he chaired the “Committee of the Future” (also known as the Committee of Tomorrow), with the objective of establishing an independent association for Canadian archivists (the other committee members were Marion Beyea, David Rudkin, and Gordon Dodds). The ACA and Archivaria were created in 1975 as a direct result of the work of this committee. Taylor was a founding member and strong supporter of the ACA and helped establish Archivaria as a leading scholarly journal in the field, publishing many articles there over the years. He advocated for an in-depth archival education program that would go beyond the short, practice-oriented educational opportunities then available. In 1975 the ACA published Guidelines Toward a Curriculum for a Master’s Degree in Archival Science, developed by Hugh Taylor and Edwin Welch. 

Hugh Taylor was also active in the Society of American Archivists (serving as its president, 1978-1979), and in provincial archival associations throughout his life in Canada (among other things, he served on the Archives Association of BC Education Committee that hired the first archival education coordinator in BC). 

Taylor was a hugely influential archival thinker, sharing his wide-ranging ideas about archives and their connection to social, cultural, and philosophical issues relating to the nature of archives in countless classrooms, conference rooms, journals, and books. As Terry Cook noted in Archivaria 60, Taylor “was intent on constructing archives anew, imagining them as places where archivists connect their records with social issues, with new media and recording technologies, with the historical traditions of archives, with the earth’s ecological systems, and with the broader search for spiritual meaning.” He was always kind, generous,  encouraging, and challenging to fellow archivists at all stages of their careers, and indeed was unflaggingly humane. 

In recognition of his value to the profession in Canada, the ACA published a festschrift, The Archival Imagination: Essays in Honour of Hugh A. Taylor, and went on to establish the Hugh A. Taylor Prize in 2006, to be presented annually to the author of the Archivaria article that best presents new ideas or syntheses in new and imaginative ways.  

Honours, Awards and Recognition 

• Society of American Archivists Fellow, 1976 
• Archivaria W. Kaye Lamb Prize, 1988 
• ACA Fellow, 1990  
• Officer of the Order of Canada, 1990  
• Archives Society of Alberta Honorary (lifetime) member, n.d.  
• Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee Medal, 2002 

Further Information 

• Barbara Craig, ed., The Archival Imagination: Essays in Honour of Hugh A. Taylor, Association of Canadian Archivists, 1992. 
• Gordon Dodds, “Hugh Taylor: the Far-Away Archivist,” in Terry Cook & Gordon Dodds, eds., Imagining Archives: Essays and Reflections by Hugh A. Taylor, SAA & ACA in association with The Scarecrow Press, 2003. 
• ACA Oral History – Jerry O’Brien https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhHF92BRWboNOTE: this interview focusses on Hugh Taylor’s style of leadership at the PAC. 
• Wikipedia entryhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Taylor_(archivist)  

Photo source: Hugh A. Taylor, ca. 1994, taken by son-in-law James Spicer, included in Terry Cook’s obituary for Hugh Taylor, Archivaria 60 (Fall 2005) https://archivaria.ca/index.php/archivaria/article/view/12524/13662