Chapter 2: Organizing the Data -- The work of Cary F. Goulson

2.a

The work of Cary F. Goulson

    Goulson's list has protected a range of information which would have been a challenge to construct from scratch at this time in Canadian history. The huge importance of Cary F. Goulson's reference essentially emerges when Goulson's list is sorted chronologically. The comparative required to analyse Canadian public education formation historically begins with this simple alteration. I entered Goulson's documents, originally sorted by province, onto a spreadsheet and was then able to sort them chronologically as well as by type of commission report. This one and only chronological sorting of commission reports produced in Canada is currently available at http://www.canadianeducationalpolicystudies.ca, (website page 3). There are 477 documents accounted for by Goulson.

  I was able to isolate the R1 (Royal Commission) documents identified by Goulson and sort from R1 documents the ones were valuable to an overview. I was also able to sort the documents by decade. A ten to eleven year gap exists between Cary F. Goulson's list and the availability of documents on the internet commenced about 1994. This has created a challenge for me particularly with provinces such as Manitoba and Saskatchewan that, in general, create public education policy incrementally through smaller report production rather than through royal commissions. The gap between 1983 and 1994 isn't necessarily accounted for with the new library databases, a search and cross-referencing of different databases seems to be required. For example, a search of the University of Manitoba's main catalogue using the categories "Manitoba," "education," and "report," did not include the 1945 and 1947 Manitoba documents available on my website, and it was difficult to trust that essential documents then, required to account for the gap between 1985 and 1994 were accounted for using basic search terms. This indicates that a range of other provincial documents in the window of time not accounted for on Goulson's list may not be showing in online searches either. Searches of various databases with cross-referencing for these years is thus required. It would also seem that I would need to resort to Goulson's traditional method and write letters to attain scholarly confirmation that essential documents have been accounted for. On this matter, the "experts" in analysis of provincial public education policy are known internally, and may not exist at all as a consequence of ideology, and thus an additional layer of investigation is added. Suffice it to write that due to the problems encountered as a consequence of balkanisation, it is going to take a good deal of methodical sorting to fill the Goulson gap in. However, there was no emerging national picture at all until I created it by chronologically reconstructing the commission reports and other governmental inquiries on the website, and I am making progress.

    Certainly after 2000, but in some cases as early as 1994, the listing in a library catalogue now involves a different type of sorting. Every part of the process of a report is made available including interim reports and submissions and briefs, such that the challenge is to find the final report amongst the interim reports and report sections. Annual reports are also available in library catalogues where they used to be filed in government stacks chronologically and together. A plethora of annual reports responding to any range of education categories muddies the waters. All this post-1994 data has to be sorted for the purposes of the collection I am building, and then different libraries catalogue different types of reports particularly in Canada where provincial productions in education are continuous and ongoing. 

    To recap then, the policy documents created in the years between 1985 and 1994 where Goulson left off his list, are not necessarily accounted for in a standard library catalogue searches and I currently find the identification of the documents for Quebec, Manitoba and Saskatchewan challenging and time-consuming. Where Goulson probably had to travel to legislative libraries, maintain correspondence with Ministry of Education and Legislative librarians, as well as borrow documents with special permission, my research is perhaps just as time-consuming but less thorough as a consequence of having to search many different libraries and continuously cross-reference to assure that nothing is overlooked. Also, I have occasionally come across historical documents (19^th century) that should have been included on Goulson's list, documents that have been come to the surface through electronic cataloguing of historical documents existing in diverse data bases. Goulson was supported in his research as he formulated his source books from his 1960 PhD research which involved collecting the commission reports. I would say my work at this time particularly with the instrumental value of the website is more than equivalent to Goulson's, but has garnered little support much as a 20^th century overview is worthwhile.