Barry M. Gough

Barry Morton Gough (born 17 September 1938) is a Canadian maritime and naval historian. In several hundred articles and reviews and more than a dozen books, he has worked to recast and reaffirm the imperial foundations of Canadian history.^[1] Active in national and international venues,^[2] Gough has made in the British Columbia context a number of monographic contributions to ethnohistory, cross-cultural relations, patterns of missionary acceptance among Northwest Coast peoples, frontier–borderland studies and environmental history.^[3]

Education

Gough was educated at Victoria High School, the University of British Columbia, the University of Montana and King's College London. He was tutored in the maritime foundations of imperial history by G. S. Graham, Rhodes Professor of Imperial History in the University of London.^[4] In addition to his earned doctorate, Gough was awarded the D.Litt. from University of London for distinguished contributions to Imperial and Commonwealth history. His thesis research on the Esquimalt naval base and British strategic matters in the North Pacific was published in 1971 as The Royal Navy and the Northwest Coast of North America.^[5]

Teaching and consulting

Initially on the teaching staff of Vic High in Victoria, B.C., Gough became in turn Lecturer, Assistant and Associate Professor, Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA, and Co-director of the Centre for Pacific Northwest Studies. From 1972 to 2004 at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., he was Associate Professor, Professor and University Research Professor. Founding director of Canadian Studies at Laurier, he was Assistant Dean of Arts from 2000-2003 and on retirement was appointed University Professor Emeritus.^[6]

His printed studies are used in a variety of academic curricula and teaching contexts.^[7] One such example, from 1998, is "Possessing Meares Island" in The Journal of Canadian Studies.^[8] Gough was advisory editor to Macmillan Publishing for World Explorers and Discoverers (1992)^[9]) and to Scribner’s for Explorers: From Ancient Times to the Space Age (1998),^[10] and was editor of the magazine American Neptune based at Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts (1997-2003).^[11]

His contract work in history has included Great Lakes shipwrecks research, the Meares Island case for the Nuu Chah Nulth, and the Alaska inland waters case on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice.^[12]

Since 2007, he has been Adjunct Professor of War Studies and History, Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ont.^[13] Gough has had visiting appointments and lectureships at University of Otago, Duke University, the University of British Columbia, Australian National University, University of Natal, National University of Singapore, King's College University of London, and the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, U.K.

Affiliations and affinities

Barry Gough is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Fellow of Kings College London, UK, and Archives By-Fellow Churchill College, Cambridge, UK. He is Paul Harris Fellow of Rotary International and Honorary Research Associate, Malaspina Research Centre, Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo, B.C. He is also a Serving Brother of the Order of St. John.

He is Past President of the British Columbia Historical Federation, Past President of the Canadian Nautical Research Society, Past President of the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Vancouver Island,^[14] and past member of the Board of Academic Advisers, The Churchill Centre, Chicago.^[15] He is a Life Member of the Association of Canadian Studies, founding member of the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States and past chair of the joint committee, American Historical Association – Canadian Historical Association. He lectures on maritime and naval topics and on Canadian history and public affairs.

Gough is Chair, Victoria High School Alumni Association, and is actively engaged in advancing the interests of the Maritime Museum of BC and Craigdarroch Castle Heritage Society in Victoria, B.C., and of the Vancouver Maritime Museum in Vancouver, B.C. He is a long-term member of the non-profit society Universal Jazz Advocates and Mentors (U-JAM)^[16] and, as jazz clarinettist, played the Victoria International JazzFest 2014.

Awards

Gough has received the Psi Upsilon Distinguished Service Alumnus Award, the Wilfrid Laurier University Alumni Hoffmann-Little Award for Outstanding Teaching,^[17] the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal^[18] and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.^[19] In November 2014, Her Honour Judith Guichon, Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia, presented Dr. Gough with the Maritime Museum of B.C.'s 2014 SS Beaver Medal for Maritime Excellence.^[20]

His writings have won critical acclaim and awards within Canada and abroad. Prizes have included the Clio Prize of the Canadian Historical Association^[21] and medals, awards and honourable mentions from various organizations: the North American Society for Oceanic History,^[22] the Writers Trust of Canada Non-Fiction Prize,^[23] the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize, B.C. Book Prizes, and the Lieutenant-Governor’s Medal for Historical Writing given by the British Columbia Historical Federation.^[24]Historical Dreadnoughts: Arthur Marder, Stephen Roskill and Battles for Naval History was chosen by the Canadian Nautical Research Society for its 2010 Keith Matthews Award, named in honour of the society's first president to recognize outstanding publications in the field of nautical research. Gunboat Frontier: British Maritime Authority and Northwest Coast Indians, 1846-1890 won the same award in 1985, and The Northwest Coast: British Navigation, Trade, and Discoveries to 1812 earned honourable mention in 1993.^[25]

Published works

Gough had three new titles published in 2014, one each from Heritage House, Douglas & McIntyre and Palgrave Macmillan. His 1997 life of Sir Alexander Mackenzie, First Across the Continent, continues as a central contribution to the study of North American exploration in the 18th and 19th centuries.^[26]

Selected bibliography

• The Royal Navy and the Northwest Coast of North America, 1810-1914: A Study of British Maritime Ascendancy. UBC Press, 1971. ISBN 0-7748-0000-3.
• Canada. Modern Nations in Historical Perspective Series. Toronto: Prentice Hall, 1975. ISBN 0-13-112789-6.
• The Northwest Coast: British Navigation, Trade and Discoveries to 1812. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1992. ISBN 0-7748-0399-1; first edition appeared as Distant Dominion (UBC Press, 1980).
• Gunboat Frontier: British Maritime Authority and Northwest Coast Indians. UBC Press. 1984. ISBN 978-0-7748-0175-1. 
• The Falkland Islands/Malvinas: Struggle for Empire in the South Atlantic. London: Continuum, 1992/Athlone Press, 1992. ISBN 978-0-485-11419-5.
• First Across the Continent: Sir Alexander Mackenzie. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press. 1997. ISBN 978-0-8061-3002-6. ; Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1997. ISBN 978-0-7710-3406-0.
• Fighting Sail on Lake Huron and Georgian Bay: The War of 1812 and its Aftermath. Naval Institute Press/Vanwell Publishing. 2002. ISBN 978-1-55750-314-5. 
• Through Water, Ice and Fire: Schooner Nancy of the War of 1812. Dundurn Press Ltd. 2006. ISBN 978-1-55002-569-9. 
• Britain, Canada and the North Pacific: Maritime Enterprise and Dominion, 1778-1914. Ashgate Variorum, 2004. ISBN 0-86078-939-X.
• Fortune’s a River: The Collision of Empires in Northwest America. Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2007. ISBN 1-55017-428-2.^[27]
• Historical Dreadnoughts: Arthur Marder, Stephen Roskill and Battles for Naval History. Seaforth/Pen and Sword, 2010. ISBN 978-1-84832-077-2.
• Introduction to Andrew David, ed., William Robert Broughton’s Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific 1795-1798. London: Hakluyt Society, 2010. ISBN 978-0-904180-97-8.
• The Historical Dictionary of Canada. Scarecrow Press. 1999. ISBN 978-0-8108-3541-2. ; 2nd edition, 2011.
• Juan de Fuca's Strait: Voyages in the Waterway of Forgotten Dreams. Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2012. ISBN 978-1-55017-573-8.
• "A Tangle of Rock and Moving Water: William Broughton's 1792 Exploration of the San Juan Archipelago," Columbia 27, no. 4 (Winter 2013-14), 20-7.
• From Classroom to Battlefield: Victoria High School and the First World War. Victoria, B.C.: Heritage House, 2014. ISBN 978-1-77203-006-8.
• The Elusive Mr. Pond: The Soldier, Fur Trader and Explorer Who Opened the Northwest. Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2014. ISBN 978-1-77162-039-0.
• Pax Britannica: Ruling the Waves and Keeping the Peace before Armageddon. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. ISBN 978-0-23035-430-2.

See also

• Churchill College, Cambridge

References

External links

• http://www.wlu.ca/homepage.php?grp_id=165 North American Studies
• http://hmcshaida.ca/hhistory.html HMCS Haida
• http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/research-guides/imperial-commonwealth-history.htm Imperial and Commonwealth History
• http://www.acsus.org/ Association for Canadian Studies in the United States