Elizabeth Blight 1944–2019

Photograph by Mike Deal, Winnipeg Free Press, 2009.

Elizabeth Blight, who developed the still image, documentary art, and cartographic holdings of the Archives of Manitoba over a career that spanned 41 years, died of cancer on 11 April 2019 at St. Andrews, Manitoba. She was 75. Rarely referred to as “Elizabeth,” she was known as Betts to family and as Betty to friends. She is remembered as being “the heart and soul of archives in Manitoba.”

Betty was born in Toronto, where her father was training bomber pilots during the Second World War. After the war, the family settled in Regina. She attended Herchmer and Benson schools and, from a young age, was involved in the arts, taking ballet lessons and following in her mother’s footsteps as a meticulous craftswoman. Throughout her high school and university days, she directed plays and took a leadership role in campus activities.

Betty received her undergraduate degree as part of the first class to graduate at the University of Regina campus where her father was Registrar. Following graduation, her sense of adventure took her to England, where she spent a year working for the Bank of Montreal in London and exploring all that the country had to offer. She returned to Regina to complete an honours degree and then moved to Manitoba, where her brother Bill and his family had settled. Family was of prime importance in Betty’s life, and she became a second mother to her nephews David and Stephen.

Betty joined the staff at what was then the Provincial Archives of Manitoba on Friday 1 December 1967. Barry Hyman remembers the date well. He assumed that his new colleague would wait until the following Monday to begin work and went to the cafeteria to get coffee for himself and two colleagues. When he returned, there was a fourth person in the room: “a young lady in a green dress with long red hair.” They would work together for 39 years and become life-long friends.

Provincial Archivist John Bovey asked his two colleagues to consider what media each would prefer to be responsible for. It was quickly determined that Barry would manage textual and government records and Betty would take the rest: photographs, paintings, maps, and drawings. She also would continue to index the correspondence of former premier Thomas Greenway–the project for which she had initially been hired.

Betty had remarkable organizational and planning abilities, which enabled her to manage an extensive and complex workload. In this early period, she had limited staff assistance. In 1968, she began development of a photographic history of Manitoba in anticipation of the province’s upcoming centennial in 1970. She also assisted the Winnipeg Art Gallery in developing the exhibit 150 Years of Manitoba Art and created displays for loan to school and religious groups during Centennial celebrations.

That same year, she attended the conference of the Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives, held in Edmonton, as a prelude to bringing some semblance of order to the Archives of Manitoba’s cartographic holdings. In addition, she was responsible for the Historical Survey of Manitoba Architecture, which added significantly to the photographic holdings.

For many years the Archives held, on deposit, the Lewis B. Foote collection of approximately 2,000 glass-plate negatives covering most aspects of the social history of Winnipeg for the years 1903–49. When the Archives purchased this collection from the family in 1971, Betty began the enormous task of separating the prints from the negatives, re-housing the negatives in acid-free envelopes, and preparing safety negatives after removing the originals from use.

Her workload was further increased when the Archives entered into an agreement with the Winnipeg Free Press for the safe-keeping of its photographic negatives. Thousands were added over many years, which significantly increased user demand and the need for additional storage and conservation treatment. As if this was not enough, Betty acted as a consultant to the Royal Winnipeg Ballet when it undertook the organization of its archival holdings.

At the...