A Real Companion and Friend:
The diary of William Lyon Mackenzie King

Behind the Diary

The Public Document: The Diary as an Archival Treasure

An Enduring Literary Monument: The Future of the Diary

"This journal . . . is the story of a human life, its ambitions, its beliefs, its failures & its broken achievements, all or any of which may be right or wrong, none of which are without their influence, and purpose for all time."
W.L.M. King (Diary, January 1, 1902)

For Canadians, Mackenzie King's legacy has consisted primarily of his impressive political contributions and his gift to the nation of his two homes: his beloved Kingsmere Estate, which now forms part of Gatineau Park, and his splendid Ottawa residence, Laurier House. However, it is increasingly clear that King's diary (together with the other archival documents that constitute the King papers) represents another major component of his legacy.

King's close friend Arthur Doughty, Canada's Dominion Archivist from 1904 to 1935, once described archives as "the gift of one generation to another." Of all the archival gifts that are held by Library and Archives Canada, King's diary is certainly one of the most remarkable. It is a textual document of exceptional quality — and extent. One of King's gifts to Canada, the diary is now, through digitization available worldwide.

Prior to digitization, King's voluminous diary was not a "user-friendly" document. Although it had evolved from a hidden, private narrative to a publicly available archival document over a 20-year period beginning in 1960, from the point of view of access it remained a challenging and difficult text, owing to the nature of its published form. For most readers, the document was only available on several hundred microfiches found at a very limited number of research libraries. Another major problem, of course, was the absence of an index.

Reading the diary under these conditions was a time-consuming, physically restrictive, and exceedingly linear process. For this reason, the diary has largely remained the purview of academics and a few intrepid creative writers. However, all this might soon change, now that King's diary has become a digital document and is available in its entirety, 24 hours a day, to anyone in the world with access to the World Wide Web. This new accessibility prompts the question: What impact will digitization have on the diary? While it is always difficult to fully anticipate the effects of technology, it is possible, perhaps, to point to two likely results of the release of the digitized diary on the Web. Both of these results relate to the readership of King's diary.

First of all, the diary now takes its place as a world-class archival document, joining other internationally significant diaries, such as those of Samuel Pepys and George Washington, which are currently found on the Web. This new availability will likely lead to a new international readership, as researchers around the world discover the diary as an important source for the study of the social, political, and military history (especially the Second World War) of the first half of the twentieth century and for the study of more specific topics relating to King's life and career, such as the early development of labour conciliation in North America and the activities of the Anglo-American spiritualist movement.

The other change to the diary's readership that might occur as a consequence of the document's digitization and electronic diffusion is a marked increase in the number of non-academic readers who will be drawn to the text. Now that the diary has been enhanced with a keyword index, the document's contents are far more accessible to a wide variety of potential readers and researchers, including creative writers, journalists, genealogists, and students.

Here in cyberspace, a multitude of different readers can, in effect, look over Mackenzie King's shoulder and read the once-private narrative that constitutes one of the most remarkable records of Canadian life in the twentieth century  -  all written by a man who helped to shape that century.

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