Richard Gerrard

Biography

While still an undergraduate, in 1980 Richard began his career as an archaeologist. He excavated historic and prehistoric sites in the western Canadian arctic, the Hudson Bay Lowlands and southern Ontario. Over eight years he did almost all the jobs one can do on an archaeological project (excavator, area supervisor, surveyor, lab technician, and material culturalist). He is still a licensed archaeologist in Ontario.

On Battle of York day (April 27, 1987) he joined the Fort York Archaeology Program to create and run their archaeology field lab.  Eighteen months later, he started working for the Toronto Historical Board/City of Toronto as the museum registrar. A job he did for 22 years, be brought the first collection database and internet connection to the city’s museums.

He was seconded to a curatorial position in 2010 as historian for the commemoration of the bicentennial War of 1812—where he was part of the team developing exhibitions for the inauguration of the Visitor Center for Fort York National Historic Site.

In 2014 he was the successful candidate for the new historian position for Toronto History Museums. In addition to providing exhibit and collections support for the 10 museums and responding to public inquiries, in recent years he acted as a subject matter expert for city-wide heritage initiatives such as commemorative (re)naming of city-owned assets, the Little Jamaica Cultural District study, and Indigenous Ancestral object repatriation projects.

And after 36 years with the city, he retired on Friday, March 17, 2023 (St. Patrick’s Day!).

The University of Victoria’s Cultural Resource Management program hired him in 2005 to teach a course in collections management, and he’s been doing this course ever since.  More recently they asked him to teach courses in Curatorial Planning and Practice, and Care of Collections. He’s also taught in the University of Toronto’s Arts Management and Museum Studies programs, and Wilfrid Laurier’s Archaeology and Heritage Studies department.

Throughout his career he has been involved in other projects and organizations as his talents, time and interests allowed. This included serving on the boards of the Ontario Museums Association and the St. George’s Society of Toronto; as a peer reviewer for various Canadian government initiatives, and a book reviewer for professional publications; and, as a mentor for more interns than he can currently recall.

In retirement, in addition to teaching for UVic, he continues to work (very part-time) as a contract archaeologist, largely on historic period sites in Ontario, in a way, returning to where he started nearly half a century ago.