My dear friends,
I thank Colleen and Philip Cercone for making their beautiful home available for this book launch and for all the work they have put into this event. I also thank Philip, Ron, and Mike for the kind things they have just said about me; and all of you for honouring me by being here. Barbara and I are delighted to see you.
I believe that at this point an author is expected to provide a brief summary of a book so
that people who may wish to buy it but may not intend to read it can more easily pretend they have done so. But I am merely the humble subject, not the author, of this book, so I feel free to follow another route.
In many respects the last 12 months have been among the happiest years of my life. I have had more time with Barbara, which I find most enjoyable, and more contact with friends, colleagues, and people whom I have lost contact with for many years, in one case since I left Preston, Ontario, in 1947. Their generous support has amazed me and helped me through difficult times.
I have also been honoured in many ways, beginning with the Order of Canada, into which
I was invested last December, followed by the Wiseman Book Prize of the archaeological
Institute of America which I received for Understanding Early Civilizations here in Montreal in January; Claude Chapdelaine's generous and perceptive essay on The Children of Aataentsic in Claude Corbo's Monuments intellectuels quebecois du XXe siecle which was published in March; the 2006 Lifetime Achievement Award of the Society for American Archaeology which was accepted for me by Michael Bisson in San Juan in April; being made James McGill Professor Emeritus with much fanfare and celebration in June expertly hosted by our Principal Heather Munroe-Blum; the publication by Cambridge University Press of a second and much improved edition of my A History of Archaeological Thought in September; and a few days ago the appearance of Eldon Yellowhorn's interview with me as the lead paper in the October issue of the Journal of Social Archaeology. It clearly has been a red-letter year.
Amongst all these honours the book being launched today stands in a class absolutely by itself. It is a work of great love, great learning, and great labour by a selection of colleagues, former graduate students, and distinguished archaeologists from abroad. Some of the papers analyse my work in highly perceptive and interesting ways, while others show how some aspects of their authors' own work were built on things I have said or done. The Archaeology of Bruce Trigger also deftly complements the second edition of A History of Archaeological Thought. If my book lets readers know what I think about the ideas of a vast number of archaeologists, both dead and living, The Archaeology of Bruce Trigger lets me and others know what a select group of archaeologists think of my ideas. That seems like appropriate reciprocity. I have already personally expressed in writing my thanks and reactions to each author, but would like to thank them again publicly. They have done a wonderful job and given me much to think about. Not least important to me, these papers recall the many happy hours I have spent working with graduate students and interacting with the other contributors.
I offer my special and heartfelt thanks to Ron Williamson and Michael Bisson for organizing the 2004 Symposium from which many of the papers are derived and for seeing this book through to completion, which as a former editor I know is never an easy task. Many a festschrift is promised but few are delivered. Finally, I congratulate McGill-Queen's University Press and its talented staff for producing such an attractive book. The Press is famous for the handsomeness of its publications and a few days ago an art teacher from Toronto, who is also an old friend, waxed lyrical on the telephone about the book's wonderful asymmetrical cover, greatly enhancing my appreciation of cover design with his comments.
The authors have painted a detailed and affectionate portrait of my life in archaeology,
with some of the more egregious warts mercifully omitted. Many of their comments have moved me deeply. I confess that, when I first read the proofs some months ago, some of what they had had written blurred my vision. Yet it is also a work of rigorous scholarship. I recognize myself in each of the papers, detect no significant errors or misrepresentations (the authors knew me well enough to be fully aware that I would be on the lookout for them), and have gained insights into what I have done that in many cases have surprised and delighted me. While verbal appreciation is always welcome, it is especially satisfying to see evidence in print that one is so well regarded and one's work appreciated.
It is also wonderful to be honoured with a celebratory volume of such high quality. Gordon Childe, whom I have always regarded, along with Harold Innis, as one of my intellectual heroes, was not so lucky. My good fortune was to have two editors who were excellent planners and recruited authors of great talent who were willing to put so much effort into this project. Already when he was a graduate student, Ron Williamson had exhibited the resourcefulness and tenacity that have made him and the company he heads, Archaeological Services Inc, leaders, trend-setters, and (perhaps of major importance) a major source of employment in Canadian archaeology.
Having been persuaded by Ron Williamson to contribute a substantial account of my academic life to this volume, I plan to say nothing more about myself, except as a footnote to inform literary aficionados that the approach I used in my autobiographical chapter was inspired largely by Jean-Paul Sartre's remarkable biography of Gustave Flaubert and that some of the passages in it specifically by Flaubert's Madame Bovary. With that cryptic pronouncement, enough has been said.
Bruce Trigger, Montreal