Marion Elizabeth Gilroy (1912–1981)

Marion Gilroy, BA portrait, 1932

Marion Gilroy began a promising academic career at the Public Archives of Nova Scotia during the 1930s. With the benefit of a Carnegie Fellowship award for a proposed study of adult education in the Halifax area in 1938, she earned a library degree at Columbia University. Then she returned to her native province to assume the task of directing the War Services Libraries in the Atlantic Defence Area for the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Merchant Marine. After the end of the Second World War, in 1946, she became the supervisor of regional public libraries in Saskatchewan with the responsibility of promoting them across extensive rural areas populated by small towns and rural farms. Her initial energy and enthusiasm led to the creation of the North Central Regional Library in the Prince Albert-Melfort area in 1950.

Through the fifties, Gilroy helped North Central develop as a model aided by the establishment of a Provincial Library in 1953 to expand extension work, especially travelling library service and a regional bookmobile. Despite the fierce independence of local communities, she continued to promote the regional concept with numerous local organizations and municipalities. She was somewhat successful in west-central Saskatchewan, where the Wheatland Regional Library eventually formed in 1967. As well, the initial stirrings of regional work in the southeast would lead to the formation of the Southeast Regional Library in 1965. However, these events did not occur until after Gilroy had left public library work in Saskatchewan.

For almost two decades, Marion Gilroy was a tireless promoter of regional systems. In 1959, the Canadian Department of Northern Affairs requested her assistance to survey library conditions and needs in the Northwest Territories. Gilroy characteristically responded by citing the need for a regional approach: “A regional library service for the Northwest Territories should be free to borrowers, flexible and geared to meet the needs of all the people of the north. It must not stop at providing materials to meet the demands of readers at all levels; it should actively stimulate and promote reading, listening and discussion. A public library system should work in close co-operation with all educational agencies including schools and school libraries with programs concerned with health, welfare, social and economic well-being, as well as with community organizations. Radio can help. A library on wings would be an asset…” (Marion Gilroy, Down and Up North, 1960).

Gilroy’s academic career resumed after she completed graduate studies in librarianship at the University of Chicago in 1959 and resigned her supervisory position in the Provincial Library in 1963 to accept a teaching position as an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia School of Librarianship. After her retirement in 1978 and death in 1981, the Regional Library headquarters in Prince Albert was named in her honour in 1985. 

I originally posted this biographical synopsis for the Ex Libris Association in 2019. The post also continues on the current ELA website. Marion Gilroy’s image is her graduate BA portrait that appeared in the Acadia University Yearbook, The Axe, in 1932.

Marion Elizabeth Gilroy

b. 20 Aug. 1912, Spring Hill, NS; d. 21 June 1981, Vancouver, BC

Education:

1932 BA Acadia University
1933 MA University of Toronto
1939 BS in LS Columbia University (Carnegie Fellowship program)
1959 MLS University of Chicago

Positions:

1933–1940 Research Librarian, Public Archives of Nova Scotia
1940–1946 Acting Director, Nova Scotia Regional Library Commission and Director, Atlantic Command Library
1946–1963 Supervisor, Regional Libraries of Saskatchewan
1963–1978 Associate Professor, University of British Columbia School of Librarianship

Publications

Gilroy, Marion (1933). The Loyalist experiment in New Brunswick. MA thesis, University of Toronto.

Gilroy, Marion (1933). “The partition of Nova Scotia,1784.” Canadian Historical Review. 14 (4): 375.

Gilroy, Marion (1936). “Customs fees in Nova Scotia.” Canadian Historical Review. 7(1): 9–22.

Gilroy, Marion (1936). “Our Need of Library Service.” Dalhousie Review 16 (3): 351–61.

Gilroy, Marion (1937). “Regional Libraries for Nova Scotia?” Maritime Library Association Bulletin 2 (3): 3–4.

Gilroy, Marion (1937). “Libraries for Nova Scotia.” Nova Scotia Journal of Education 8: 213–217.

Gilroy, Marion (1937). Loyalists and land settlement in Nova Scotia. A list compiled by Marion Gilroy under the direction of D.C. Harvey. Halifax: Published by the authority of the Board of Public Archives of Nova Scotia.

Gilroy, Marion, comp. (1938a) A catalogue of maps, plans and charts in the Public Archives of Nova Scotia. Compiled under the direction of D.C. Harvey, Archivist. Halifax, N.S.

Gilroy, Marion (1938b). “The imperial customs establishment in Nova Scotia, 1825–1855.“ Canadian Historical Review. 19 (3): 277–291.

Gilroy, Marion (1946). “The Buffalo Conference [A.L.A. June 16–22, 1945].” Maritime Library Institute Bulletin 10, no. 4: 3–4.

Gilroy, Marion (1951). “Saskatchewan's first regional library.” Ontario Library Review 35 (1): 87–88.

Gilroy, Marion (1952). “Taking the books to the people.” Canadian Library Association Bulletin 9 (2, pt. 1): 39–43.

Gilroy, Marion (1952). “A New Prairie Crop; New Library Activity in Northern Saskatchewan.” Food for Thought 12 (7): 5–10.

Gilroy, Marion (1956). “Nora Bateson.” Food for Thought 16 (6): 242–244.

Gilroy, Marion (1960). “Down and Up North.” Food for Thought 20 (6): 276–281, 290.

Gilroy, Marion (1960). “With Parka and Sleeping Bag.” American Library Association 54 (4): 294–299.

Gilroy, Marion (1960). Library co-operation in Britain, 1950–1958. Ottawa: Canadian Library Association.

Gilroy, Marion (1963). Libraries in the Western Part of the Island of Montreal: Present and Proposed; a Report for the West Island Regional Library Council. Montreal: s..n.

Gilroy, Marion (1964). “Cat’s Cradles to Tractors; Books and Libraries for the Northwest Territories.” Canadian Geographical Journal 69 (6): 198–201.

Gilroy, Marion (1966). “Sights and Insights: Jokkmok to Yerevan. British Columbia Library Quarterly 29 (April): 8–13.

Gilroy, Marion and Samuel Rothstein, eds. (1970). As we remember it: interviews with pioneering librarians of British Columbia. Vancouver: University of British Columbia School of Librarianship with the cooperation and assistance of the Library Development Commission of British Columbia.

Gilroy, Marion (1968). “Regional Libraries in Retrospect, 1927-1967.” In Librarianship in Canada, 1946–1967; Essays in Honour of Elizabeth Homer Morton ed. by Bruce Baden Peel, 58–72. Victoria: Canadian Library Association.

Gilroy, Marion (1979). Pioneers! O pioneers: the genesis of regional libraries. [Regina]: Saskatchewan Library Association.

Associations/Committees:

Maritime Library Association; President, 1941–45
Saskatchewan Library Association, President, 1948–49
Canadian Library Association; President, 1951–52

Other Activities:

Marion Gilroy “performed surveys of library needs across Canada, in regions as diverse Montreal Island and the Northwest Territories. She also hosted many radio and television broadcasts and had a stint as a movie star in the National Film Board production Books for Beaver River.” During her teaching at UBC [University of British Columbia] she taught courses in public libraries, school libraries, readers services and book selection. In later years she traveled to exotic places including Russia and the Canadian North.
— Celebrating Women’s Achievements

One of the individuals to whom the Saskatchewan of today owes a great debt of gratitude is often referred to as “the small woman in the big hat driving the big black van.” Her name was Marion Gilroy, and her accomplishments are nothing short of heroic.
— Verne Clemence, Saskatchewan's Own, 2004

Sources:

Chan, May (2004). Marion Gilroy fonds. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Archives (last revised October 2011). Accessed March 27, 2014.
Library and Archives Canada. Celebrating Women’s achievements. Marion Gilroy. Accessed December 5, 2023.
Clemence, Verne. “Books for the Regions: Marion Gilroy, 1912–1981” in Saskatchewan's Own: People Who Made a Difference. Calgary: Fifth House, 2004.
Kerr, Donald. A Book in Every Hand: Public Libraries in Saskatchewan. Regina: Coteau Books, 2005 (pp. 62-81).