The Friesen Historical Collection, a new special collection that is housed on the Thompson Campus of the University College of the North (UCN), will officially open Oct. 16 at 4 p.m. in the Wellington & Madeleine Spence Memorial Library. Library Director for UCN Libraries Heather Smith, and Meaghan Buchanan, UCN’s archivist and Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA) officer, both plan to travel from the Oscar Lathlin Research Library at UCN’s campus in The Pas to Thompson to be on hand for the opening ceremony.
Gerald Friesen, 76, professor emeritus of history and a a retired senior fellow of St. John’s College at the University of Manitoba donated the collection. He is an expert on Western Canada, Manitoba, labour history and communication history, and taught in the History Department at the University of Manitoba for 40 years. Friesen has written extensively on Western Canadian history from a social history perspective. Friesen is the author of several books, including The Canadian Prairies: A History; Citizens and Nation: An Essay on History, Communication, and Canada; The West: Regional Ambitions, National Debates, Global Age; Prairie Metropolis: New Essays on Winnipeg Social History; Rural Life: Portraits of the Prairie Town, 1946; and River Road: Essays on Manitoba and Prairie History.
Selkirk, Manitoba historian Stephen C. Sharman, in reviewing Toward Defining the Prairies: Region, Culture and History, which contains a selection of the papers presented at a conference of the same name held at St. John’s College in September 1998, and edited by Robert Wardhaugh, a Canadian political and regional historian at the University of Western Ontario (UWO), also now commonly known as Western University, in London, Ontario, whose research interests include the era of Mackenzie King, federalism, the Second World War, political parties, political culture, the 1920s, and the Prairie West, wrote of Friesen’s paper, “Defining the Prairies: Or Why Don’t the Prairies Exist” that he challenged “his readers to re-examine their understanding of Prairie identity, rural, agricultural and nostalgic in the light of new political and economic realities.” Sharman’s review appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Manitoba History Number 44, Autumn/Winter 2002-2003, published by the Manitoba Historical Society since 1980.
“The rural agricultural world still exists but it is now overshadowed by an urban and industrial world,” Sharman noted in reviewing Friesen’s paper. “Nostalgia reminds us of our roots but the Prairies belong to a new world of Western Canada which includes British Columbia. Friesen concludes: “It is time to take stock of a new west. It is time to leave behind the imagined prairie region. The new ways of thinking about this part of the country are the result of changes in western economy, in the structure of government, and especially in the cultural and communication contexts of contemporary life.” With this challenge to an accepted understanding of prairie identity, the book begins, writes Sharman.
Friesen was born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. He graduated with a B.A. Honors in history from the University of Saskatchewan in 1965.
He received his masters’ degree from the University of Toronto in 1966 and his Ph.D. in 1974. Friesen began teaching at the University of Manitoba in the fall of 1970. In 1976 he was the recipient of the Dr. and Mrs. H.H. Saunderson Award for Excellence in Teaching
Friesen was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2002 and served as president of the Canadian Historical Association from 2003 to 2005.
Friesen has also served on the executive of the Manitoba Historical Society and Société Historique Saint-Boniface, as well as treasurer of the Manitoba Federation of Labour’s Education Centre.
He served as a board member board for Canada’s Visual History/L’Histoire Visuelle du Canada (National Museum of Canada and the National Film Board) and as an advisor to CBC’s Canada: A People’s History film project.
Friesen has spoken at the Centre for Human Rights Research annual “Critical Conversations” seminar series at Robson Hall on the University of Manitoba’s Fort Garry Campus on “Residential Schools and Saskatchewan Cree Collective Memory” as part of a seminar on “Residential Schools: Memories and Histories.”
You can also follow me on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jwbarker22
soundingsjohnbarker 