Canadian editor, writer and encyclopedist
James Harley Marsh
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Born
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1943-09-10
)
September 10, 1943
(age 80)
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Nationality
| Canadian
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Occupation(s)
| editor,writer
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James Harley Marsh
,
CM
(born September 10, 1943) is a Canadian editor, writer and encyclopedist.
Marsh found his metier in a summer job with educational publisher
Holt, Rinehart and Winston
, learning all aspects of the business from copy editing to the inner workings of the typesetting and printing industries. He was the editor of a centennial history of Canada called
Canada: Unity and Diversity
and of a series of social studies volumes - writing one of them along the way (
The Fishermen of Lunenburg
).
From 1970 to 1980 Marsh was the editor of the Carleton Library Series, a series of scholarly works on
Canadian history
and
social science
that made a significant contribution to the growth of
Canadian studies
in universities. In 10 years he edited 60 volumes in the series while co-authoring his first textbook on Canadian history,
New Beginnings
.
After 33 years as the founding editor of
The Canadian Encyclopedia
, James Marsh retired on March 31, 2013. He was described as a 'Canadian who changed the world' by
The Globe and Mail
newspaper.
[1]
[2]
The Canadian Encyclopedia
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edit
]
Edmonton publisher
Mel Hurtig
brought Marsh to Edmonton in 1980 to be the editor in chief of
The Canadian Encyclopedia
. There Marsh drew up plans for Canada's first comprehensive
encyclopedia
since the 1950s and hired some 40 staff, 400 consultants and several thousand contributors. The ambitious project was completed and published to laudatory reviews in September 1985.
James Marsh has been editor-in-chief of all three print editions of
The Canadian Encyclopedia
(1985, 1988 and 1999), of
The Junior Encyclopedia of Canada
and he has shepherded the encyclopedia into the digital world with numerous
CD-ROM
versions with publisher
McClelland & Stewart
and the online versions with the
Historica Foundation
. He is also the editor in chief of the
Canadian Youth Encyclopedia
and of
The Encyclopedia of Music in Canada
.
Since 2000 Marsh has also been Director of Content Development at the
Historica Foundation
, where he has planned and co-written the web sites "Champlain in Acadia," "Voices: The Canadian Political System," "Canadian Black History Portal," "Asia Canada," and "HistoryWire.ca."
Selected works
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]
- The Fishermen of Lunenburg
(1968)
- The Fur Trade in Canada
(1969)
- The Exploration of Canada
(1970)
- New Beginnings: a Social History of Canada
, Volumes I & II (1971), co-authored with Daniel Francis
- "Timeline of Canadian and World History" (1983?present)
- Alberta: A Story of the Province and Its People
(1993)
- Beginnings: From the First Nations to the Great Migration
(1996)
- "Tous les Savoirs du Monde,"
Lumina
(Journal of 18th Century Studies) (2000)
- Co-editor,
Alberta: A State of Mind
(2005)
- "Alberta's Quiet Revolution: The Early Lougheed Years" in Michael Payne
et al.
, editors,
Alberta Formed/Alberta Transformed
(2006).
- James Marsh has also been the author of over 100 newspaper articles on Canadian history.
Honours
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External links
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References
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International
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National
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Academics
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