Person

Bailey, Alfred Goldsworthy

1905-1997

Alfred Goldsworthy Bailey was born on March 18, 1905, in Quebec City, Quebec.
 
He was an ethnohistorian, anthropologist, university builder and administrator, and among the first of Canada's "modernist" poets. Born into a family of professors at the University of New Brunswick, Bailey was naturally interested in science, geology, history, anthropology, and literature. He graduated from the University of New Brunswick (B.A., 1927) and the University of Toronto (M.A., 1929; Ph.D. in ethnohistory and aboriginal culture, 1934), where he was introduced to the poetry of T.S. Eliot. After graduating, Bailey worked as a reporter for the Toronto Mail and Empire. In 1934, he spent a year on a Royal Society of Canada fellowship studying at the London School of Economics, where he was introduced to "leftist politics" and the poetry of Dylan Thomas. From 1935 to 1938, he worked as assistant director and associate curator at the New Brunswick Museum in Saint John, New Brunswick. The President of the University of New Brunswick (UNB) Jones offered to elect Bailey to head a history department if he could talk the province into granting the university sufficient funding. Dr. Bailey did so and held that position until 1969, during which time he not only oversaw the starting of the departments of anthropology, sociology, psychology, political science, and economics, but also laid the foundation of the provincial archives, and, as Honorary Librarian and Chief Executive Officer of the UNB Library (1946-59), 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 he served as Dean of Arts (1946-64) and Vice-President Academic (1965-69). Dr. Bailey was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1951, received three honorary doctorates, was made the New Brunswick representative on the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, and served on the first advisory board of the National Library of Canada, and the Governor General’s Literary Awards committee. He was appointed Officer of the Order of Canada in 1978 and received honorary membership in the Association of Canadian Archivists in 1989. UNB awarded him the title emeritus, and the City of Fredericton made him a freeman in 1984.

He wrote poetry from college through retirement. His books of poetry include Songs of the Saguenay (1927), Tao (1930), Border River (1952), Thanks for a Drowned Island (1973), and Miramichi Lightning: The Collected Poems of Alfred G. Bailey (1981).
 
 
In 1934, he married Jean Craig Hamilton (1906-1998). He died on April 21, 1997, in Fredericton, New Brunswick.