Dossier f52 - MacDermaid, Anne, nee Stalker

File consists of a recording of Anne MacDermaid. Topics of the conversation include youthful appointment (1977) as Queen's University Archivist. Farm upbringing, schooling at Napanee CI . Choice of McGill University for undergraduate study (Montreal aunt's offer of free room and board); significance of aunt's generosity before era of magnificent scholarships; parents' moral support, inability to afford costs. Influence of high school teacher Jim Edie in fostering love of history. Undergraduate history major in McGill's newly-opened French­Canadian Studies Institute; history MA (supported by scholar­ ship, residence fellowship) at Carleton University's Institute of Canadian Studies. Specialization in pre-Confederation Canadian history: MA thesis on mutual influence of Church and rebels throughout rebellion in Lower Canada; fascination for conflict of interest suffered by disturbed Bishop Artigue in dealings with rebels (torn between conservative Church attitude and French Canadian sympathies). Fortunate timing of stages in career-marriage development: regular student existence during first year of marriage, seven years' working commitment before bearing first child; confident love of established career, seen as a context for motherhood not as a threat to it; 'natural' growth into senior position through previous Acting Archivist appointments. Sense that younger women now are rejecting careerism, opting for traditional domestic status. Two years' PhD coursework at University of Toronto, abandoned from sense of supersaturation with specialized study ('I could feel my brain starting to dry up'); desire to utilize training in a more vital way, suggestion by Professor Maurice Careless of professional archivism. Fortunate enrolment in archival summer course (co­-sponsored by Ottawa Public Archives, Carleton University, Canadian Historical Association); year's employment in Queen's Political Studies Department, organising Documentation Unit; 8-year position as Queen's Assistant Archivist, eventual appointment as Archivist. Theory that careerwoman profits most when tutored by successful male colleague; 8-year 'intensive internship' under former Archivist Jan Wilson; educational share in management decisions of four-person Archives Council. Factor of male's willingness to share in successful instructional relationship: likelihood of male staff person sharing most with female assistant, seen not as career threat but as stereotype 'hand­maiden'; recent shift among male professionals to sensing women as most threatening competitors. Professional objectivity/subjectivity as a factor of personality and training, not of sex. Employee commitment, loyalty, to Queen's Archives; shared focus on work, satisfaction in Archive successes; personal feeling of rewarding elation when things go well, challenge of problem-solving when trouble threatens. Dual responsibility of Archives to both donors and researchers; stimulating nature of different contacts. Administrative hint from Dr. Deutsch never to pause over a decision once made: work your best, then move on. Queen's as a non-possessive Archives; belief in accessibility of holdings. Comparison of man-to-man and woman-to-woman working relationships: wary mistrustfulness apparent in senior-junior male relationships, frank willingness to instruct common among women. Value of Hidden Voices oral history project; general meeting of Oral History Association of Canada; validity of oral history as complement to (not substitute for) written history. Tendency among teenage women of subject's acquaintance to early matrimony, purely domestic career; contrast of combined career-marriage arrangements of majority of subject's female peers (though employed in traditional female jobs, not necessarily employed at time of marriage). Archivism as development of historians' efforts, not librarians' (Canadian Public Archives predating National Library); dissimilar functions of librarian, archivist (to be good at one is not necessarily to be good at the other). Archivism as a 60% male profession, even today; archival origins in monastic record-keeping; convent record-keeping in Canada; female penchant for keeping diaries; interviewer's speculation how religious male and female record-keeping habits differed, subject's conjectures on role of Church hierarchy in imposing desired record-keeping forms.