Gordon, Robert S, 1923-1995 : Public servant (Ottawa, Ont.)
Robert (Bob) Stanislaw Gordon was born in Tokyo, Japan, on the 18th of April 1923. He grew up in Poland. From 1940-1941, he was a cell leader with the Polish underground army, the Armia Krajowa. He was captured by the Germans in 1941 and was interned as a POW at Luckenwalde (Stalag III A) Labour Camp and Spandau Military Prison. After the war, he spent some time in Borghorst Displaced Persons Camp, located in the British Sector of occupied Germany. Borghorst was mostly populated by Poles, Yugoslavians, Lithuanians and Estonian refugees. Bob Gordon was multilingual. It was likely his fluency in Polish, Russian, and German, that helped him find employment as a Provost Officer (Lieutenant) with the British Occupying Army of the Rhine (1945-1946) and as a liaison officer (1946-1947) for the International Refugee Organization, a temporary specialized agency of the United Nations
Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. For a time, immediately after the war, he also
attended the Commercial Lyceum, Military Education Centre, BOAR, and Hansa University, in Hamburg, Germany. In 1948, he was given an honourable discharge from the Occupation Forces. Bob Gordon, was the recipient of the 1939-1945 War Medal and the 1939-1945 Star.
Bob Gordon immigrated to Canada in 1948, arriving aboard the SS General Sturgis at the port of Halifax on the 13th of January. From 1948 to 1952, he worked during the summer as a substation power house operator at Algoma Steel. He also worked as a research translator of Russian and German scientific and technical publications for ALCAN and from 1950 to 1952, as an archivist at the Anglican Archives, Diocese of Montreal. In 1952, he graduated from McGill with an honours BA in history. On the 28th of September 1953, he became a Canadian citizen. From 1953 to 1955 he was employed as a records manager at Algoma Steel in Sault St. Marie.
Bob Gordon began his career at the Public Archives of Canada in 1956. He became head of the Public Records Section in 1964, was head of the Post-Confederation Section from 1964 to 1965, and in 1965, became the Director of the Manuscript Division. In 1989, he worked as a senior advisor to the Assistant Dominion Archivist. After a professional career of thirty-three years at the National Archives of Canada, he retired in 1989. A year after his retirement, he opened The Autograph Gallery, a business which specialized in the selling and appraisal of historical documents, manuscripts, and autographs. Robert Gordon died in 1995.
While at the National Archives, Bob Gordon was responsible for instituting and implementing many new procedures and work processes. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he started the Systematic National Acquisition Program (SNAP) at the National Archives of Canada, a documentation process for the intellectual and physical control of private textual archival records. The SNAP program continues to be used at Library and Archives Canada to this day. He was also responsible for the development and implementation of the new concept of General Inventories and new acquisition policies on multiculturalism, resulting in the establishment of the Ethnic Archives at the National Archives of Canada.
Bob Gordon was the driving force behind the creation of the Union List of Manuscripts in Canadian Repositories, commonly known as the ULM. The ULM was the first national survey and inventory of primary source historical records held in Canadian repositories. No similar catalogues were in existence at the time. From 1960 to 1962, Gordon undertook extensive travels through Canada to enlist the support and cooperation of municipal, private, and provincial archives, libraries, museums and other cultural heritage organizations. The result was the publication of the ULM in 1968, followed by a revised edition and three supplements. Bob Gordon served as editor of the Union List of Manuscripts from 1960 to 1968 and as Director from 1968 to 1985.
Bob Gordon was a founder of the National Archival Appraisal Board (NAAB), an independent, not-for-profit corporation for the appraisal of donated private records for tax purposes. An active promoter and member of NAAB during its first decades, he recognized the important role which the organization played as an incentive to Canadians to donate historical records to archival repositories. Gordon was a NAAB chairman from 1971 to 1985 and a NAAB regional director from 1973 to 1978.
Bob Gordon was the author of reviews, commentaries, and numerous articles on archival theory and methodology which were published in scholarly journals. He also presented papers at meetings of the Canadian Historical Association, the Society of American Archivists, the Association of Canadian Archivists, and local historical societies and gave lectures on archival principles, theory, and administration at Carleton University and at CGEPs in Montreal and Quebec City. In addition to the production of scholarly works, Bob Gordon also wrote fictional short stories which he submitted to various popular magazines for publication.
Bob Gordon was an active member of many professional organizations including the Society of American Archivists, the Manuscript Society, the International Council on Archives, the Association of Canadian Archivists, and the Society of Archivists. He served as the Secretary-Treasurer of the Canadian Historical Association from 1956 to 1979.
