Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Summer 2012
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly 32:3 (Summer 2012).
Abstract
Autobiography has been dismissed as the most self-indulgent of literary forms-biographer Humphrey Carter called it the "most respectable form of lying"-but Always an Adventure seems a little deficient in these respects. Instead, it offers a forthright account of the life of one of Canada's most eminent public historians.
After starting his working life in 1947 as a sign painter, Hugh Dempsey quickly moved on to become a newspaper reporter and publicist before taking up a career with the Glenbow Museum and Archives in Calgary. His book discusses the early, and sometimes contentious, history of the Glenbow, and Dempsey's stories of finding major archival collections in basements and abandoned buildings seem almost incredible now in a world of records management and collection acquisition committees. Similarly, the museum's history and ethnography programs often purchased items from people who just arrived at the museum's front desk, literally artifact in hand, although Dempsey was a stickler for ensuring that information about provenance and function was collected and that donors were treated with a modicum of respect and understanding.
Comments
Copyright © 2012 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska.