Bailey, Alfred Goldsworthy, 1905-1997 : Born in Quebec in 1905, Alfred Goldsworthy Bailey was an ethnohistorian, anthropologist, university builder and administrator, and among the first of Canadian modernist poets. Bailey completed a B.A. at the University of New Brunswick in 1927, and an M.A. at the University of Toronto (1929) where he became friends with poets Roy Daniells, Robert Finch, E.K. Brown, Dorothy Livesay, Stanley Ryerson, Henry Noyes, Malcolm Ross, and Earle Birney. Bailey worked as a reporter for The Mail and Empire before returning to the specialize ethno-history and aboriginal culture at the U of T in 1934.
Bailey worked as assistant director and associate curator at the New Brunswick Museum in Saint John from 1935-1938. In his last year at the Museum Bailey was elected to head the UNB History Department, after he had successfully convinced the province to provide funding for this position, which Bailey held until 1969. During his time as head of the department, Bailey oversaw the starting of the departments of anthropology, sociology, psychology, political science, and economics, and laid the foundation of the provincial archives. As Honorary Librarian and Chief Executive Officer of the UNB Library (1946-59), Bailey was instrumental in directing and advising Lord Beaverbrook in the selection and purchase of approximately 50,000 books. In addition, he oversaw the construction, design, and funding for the new UNB library, and served as Dean of Arts (1946-64) and Vice-President Academic (1965-69). He retired from UNB in 1970 and was appointed Professor Emeritus.
Bailey was instrumental in establishing a literary community in New Brunswick, mainly through his role in hosting a group of his literary friends at his own home, a group which later became known as the Bliss Carman Society, founded in 1940. Bailey kept minutes of these meeting and kept mimeographed copies of the poems that were read there. The poems from these meetings were published by Bailey in a literary magazine, The Fiddlehead, in 1945, which is now one of Canada's oldest literary magazines.
He is esteemed for his seminal doctoral dissertation The Conflict of European and Eastern Algonkian Cultures, 1504-1700: A Study in Canadian Civilization (1937; 1969). According to the New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia "In a sense, he created the field of ethnohistory in Canada." His other publications include Songs of the Saguenay and other poems (1927); Tao: A Ryerson Poetry Chap Book (1930); Culture and Nationality: Essays (1972); Thanks for a Drowned Island (1973); Miramichi Lightning (1981); and The Letters of James and Ellen Robb: Portrait of a Fredericton Family in Early Victorian Times (1983).
