R.E. Gosnell, pioneer tourist promoter, fired as provincial librarian and archivist, he fought back with sharpened pen.

“One of those tree wheeling, Jack of all trades who made British Columbia colourful at the turn of the century,” to quote one historian, R. Edward Gosnell has been called the father of today's Provincial Library and Archives.

He also was a journalist, publicist, writer, editor, promoter, government worker and behind the scenes politician.

All of which earned him a mark, be it ever so humble, on provincial maps. It isn't much if you measure communities by size and population, but Gosnell is there, in the finest of print. Designated a station on the CNR, it’s located near the junction of the Albreda and North Thompson rivers, in Kamloops country.

Its namesake had quite a career. Quebec born in 1860, journalist by profession, he headed west after several years in Ontario, and arrived in “Stumptown” (that's Vancouver to those of short memory) in time to cover the arrival of the first transcontinental train for eastern papers.

Two years later he moved to Victoria, there to suggest to the provincial government that “it was time this growing province, with its great history, had a library, to give proper service to the members of the legislature.” The government agreed and offered him the job of provincial librarian.

It actually was a curious example of government economy: in effect a double portfolio as librarian and as private secretary to the premier. The ladder position proved to be difficult, one premier being the firebrand Joe Martin who's remembered for the controversy of his 106-day-long term of office.

In short, Martin fired him. But if he thought Gosnell would fold his tent and silently steal away, he was greatly mistaken. The enraged librarian-secretary, who'd trained as a journalist, took his case to the people by writing letters to newspapers and stoutly denying that he’d violated privilege or that he ‘directly or indirectly took any part in politics, dominion or provincial. He did not go to political gatherings and attended no committee meetings.

“During my years in the public service I never publicly or privately endeavoured to influence a single vote. Outside of a few personal friends of both sides I never talked politics to anyone...”

Gosnell's firing made news as far east as Montreal, that city’s Gazette crediting him with having a national reputation for being “an enthusiastic worker, not in politics, but in the duties of his office.” The Quebec newspaper further credited him with having laid the foundation for a valuable provincial library on the barest of budgets and with such selfless dedication that he couldn't have found time to play politics.

When the Hon. Joe Martin was forced to resign after one of the shortest terms of office in provincial history, Gosnell went back to work as provincial librarian and archivist and produced his Year Book of British Columbia series, now prized by collectors. Unlike modern annual reports, Gosnell’s version is an out-and-out promotional pitch for his adopted province. Intolerant of dreary statistics he waxed lyrical over the joys of B.C.

Here, for example his purplish praise of the Inside Passage: “Free from the cares and conventionalities of everyday life, and breathing the very air of heaven itself, you burst like the Ancient Mariner into an unknown sea filled with untold beauties and sail over a bosom of waters unruffled as glass, among myriads of islands, through deep, rugged, rock-walled channels; past ancient Indian villages, medieval glaciers, dark solemn, pine-clothed shores, snow-capped peaks, clashing cataracts, yawning mountain gorges spouting monsters and sea-whelps -- away to the north, 1000 miles, to mix with the icebergs that once flooded under the sovereignty of the Czar of all the Russias, but now over which the American eagle holds watch full guard; a continuous panorama in which the purest, the rarest, the wildest, the most beautiful and grandest forms of nature are revealed.”

That's 123 words and 21 commas in a single sentence, and all on a civil servant’s pay!

Although mariners would take exception to his idyllic description of the Inside Passage as being “a bosom of water unruffled as glass,” few would deny his poetic licence in praise of the Dogwood Province.

To R.E. Gosnell, of Gosnell, B.C. fame, goes the honor of being one of the province’s first tourist promoters as well as that of being father of our provincial library and archives.

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