Margaret Jean Clay

September 30, 1891 – April 1982 (Age 91)

Margaret Jean Clay – A Life Well Lived

Victoria Library School

A library school was inaugurated as part of the Victoria Library under the leadership of Chief Librarian Helen Stewart. One student, Margaret J. Clay, succeeded Stewart in 1924.

Margaret J. Clay, 1924–1952—In 1924, Margaret Clay became chief librarian. Her term of office, which lasted until 1952, was a time of significant change for the library. One former GVPL librarian characterized this period as “a series of struggles that forged the old ‘free library’ into a 20th-century public library” (Teece, 1989).

Women of Influence: A Partial History of CFUW Victoria

The Library Book: A History of Service to British Columbia

By David Obee

“Many notable names in the pioneering years of BC’s library world are memorialized in the pages of this volume. Among them is Andrew Carnegie, whose celebrated gifts to Canada of 125 public library buildings resulted in three permanent sites in the province; a fourth was offered but rejected in the city of Nelson because many locals there disapproved of the donor’s “false and vicious economic principles” (p. 49). We also learn of the vision, hard work and resilience of such dedicated personages as Alma Russell, Ethelbert Scholefield, Helen Gordon Stewart, Eliza Machin, Margaret Clay, and John Ridington, to name a few. Among their many accomplishments were the earliest training course in librarianship (1913), the development of regional library systems, and the founding of the first academic library at the University of British Columbia (1915). The era also saw the establishment of a comprehensive bookmobile system to serve areas lacking library services. In years to come, the highly-charged case involving one John Marshall, who was fired from that mobile service at the height of the 1950s “Red scare,” provides an instructive parable on the continuing issue of intellectual freedom.”

The Victoria Public Library’s in-service training program, headed by Margaret Clay, was another successful, though limited, entry into librarianship for British Columbia.