James Harley Marsh: Biography

“We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us.” – Marcel Proust

James Marsh was born in Toronto, the first son of Ada and John. He spent the first few years in the care of Mrs Mitchell’s “baby farm” and then with a surrogate while John recuperated from a serious war injury. He attended Davenport and Perth Avenue schools before spending five years at Oakwood Collegiate. His stint at Waterloo Lutheran University (now Wilfrid Laurier) was ended after two years by his first permanent job as an education editor at Holt Rinehart & Winston in Toronto. Within two years he learned 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).

James Marsh in Florence 2010

In 1970 Jack McClelland and the Institute of Canadian Studies at Carleton University hired James Marsh to be the editor of the Carleton Library Series, a series of scholarly works on Canadian history and social science. In ten years he edited 60 volumes in the series and co-authored his first textbook, New Beginnings. He also completed a combined history and art history degree and raised a daughter, Rebeccah.

Edmonton publisher Mel Hurtig brought James Marsh to Edmonton in 1980 to be the editor in chief of The Canadian Encyclopedia. There he drew up plans for Canada’s first comprehensive encyclopedia since the 1950s and hired some 40 staff, 200 consultants and several thousand contributors. The ambitious project was completed and published on time, within budget and to great reviews and commercial success 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 numerous CD-ROM versions and is currently (since 1999) editor in chief of the online versions of The Canadian Encyclopedia and The Encyclopedia of Music in Canada.

Since 2000 James Marsh has also developed content for the Historica Foundation, where he planned and co-wrote the web sites “Champlain in Acadia,” “Voices: Getting the Vote,” and “Asia Canada,” and for the successor Historica-Dominion Institute, where he has produced the web sites “Black History Portal,” and “War of 1812.” He has also been responsible for the creation of Access.ca, a web site to relate curricula to online resources, for FYCanada, an interactive site for young people, and Historywire.ca, which has morphed into The Canadian Encyclopedia Blog.

James Marsh’s publications include the books The Fishermen of Lunenburg (Toronto: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968), The Fur Trade in Canada (Toronto: Collier Macmillan, 1969), The Exploration of Canada (Toronto: Collier Macmillan, 1970), New Beginnings: a Social History of Canada, Volumes I & II (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1971), co-authored with Daniel Francis,”Timeline of Canadian and World History” (1983-present), Alberta: A Story of the Province and Its People (Toronto: Nelson, 1993), Beginnings: From the First Nations to the Great Migration (Toronto: Nelson, 1996), “Making History Whole Again,” review of Who Killed Canadian History? by J.L. Granatstein, Ottawa Citizen, April 26, 1998 and “Tous les Savoirs du Monde,” Lumina (Journal of 18th Century Studies) (Fall 2000). He is co-editor of Alberta: A State of Mind, published by Key Porter in summer 2005 and author of the chapter “Peoples of Alberta” in that volume. He is also author of “Alberta’s Quiet Revolution: The Early Lougheed Years” in Michael Payne et al, editors, Alberta’s 2005 Centennial History(University of Alberta Press).

James Marsh reading under a statue of the great Denis Diderot in Paris, 1986.

James Marsh has also been the author of over 100 Dateline history columns which appeared weekly in the CanWest newspaper chain, as well as an article on Vimy Ridge written for the National Post, over 500 articles in The Canadian Encyclopedia and numerous blogs.

James Marsh is a member of the Order of Canada and was awarded the Lorne Dawson Centenary Medal of the Royal Society of Canada (1986) in recognition of his achievement of producing The Canadian Encyclopedia, as well as the Alberta Centennial Medal for Albertans who have made “significant contributions to their fellow citizens.” He is a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. He served as a member of the federal Advisory Council on the Information Highway and is currently a member of the editorial board of the Virtual Museum of Canada.