Jim Snowdon

1947-2008

Whether you consider his craft in the antiques world or his professional role as a historian and teacher, Jim Snowdon was an original. He possessed that rare combination of a passion for antiques and equally strong historical sense of place.

It is difficult to know which came first but his love of history, particularly local to the Tantramar marshes of Sackville, New Brunswick, was a constant inspiration. Much of Jim’s interest in material history began to shape his future in the 1960s. He became one of the first students of history to methodically record through oral interviews the traditions and folkways of New England Planter descendants and Yorkshire people who settled the upper stretches of the Bay of Fundy.

Much of that seminal work into early community studies and material history was translated into his Bachelors degree at Mount Allison University. In his inimitable style, Jim was not content to produce the patented historical study of a community; but instead laid the groundwork for a model that graduate students and scholars frequently quote. The title of his M.A. thesis at UNB in 1976, “Footprints in the Marsh Mud: Politics and Land Settlement in the Township of Sackville, 1760-1800” summarizes his pioneering and often maverick approach of looking at and stimulating thought about our heritage.

This manner was equally employed in his pursuit of antiques and in his history classes at Acadia University which became some of the most popular among the student body. He always maintained that in order to appreciate one’s place in the world, you had to constantly challenge accepted opinion. This philosophy opened up new ways to look at the place of local material history in a regional and national context. Jim’s research and tireless pursuit of antiques raised awareness in the public eye about many aspects of Maritime culture that would otherwise have been lost.

Our knowledge base of regional crafts and furniture styles, primitive art, oral traditions and the role of community in our historical landscape are that much more enriched because he cared. While we will all terribly miss his dry humour and subtle wit, everyone who had the privilege to know him is richer as a result.

-- Roger Nason