Victoria Library School
Under the leadership of chief librarian Helen Stewart, a library school was inaugurated as part of the Victoria Library. One student, Margaret J. Clay, succeeded Stewart in 1924. Other graduates who went on to prominent positions included Margaret Crompton (later Mrs Thurston Taylor), who became reference librarian at the Enoch Pratt Free Library; Phyllis Knowles (later Mrs Byron Blood), who was cataloguing librarian at the Webb Institute of Naval Architecture; and Elsie Taylor, who became assistant cataloguer at the American Library in Paris.
Margaret J. Clay, 1924–1952 – In 1924, Margaret Clay became chief librarian. Her term of office, which lasted until 1952, was a time of much 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 are 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 on the grounds that 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 witnessed the establishment of a wide-ranging bookmobile system to serve outlying areas then lacking library service. 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.”
McGill summer library institute, Banff, Alberta, August 1941.
Victoria Public Library’s in-service training program headed by Margaret Clay was another successful, though limited, entry into librarianship for British Columbia.
University of Victoria Honorary degree recipient
CLAY, Margaret Jean (Deceased) | LLD | May 1973 |