From the Globe and Mail, Jan 12 99

Archivist, librarian, historian. Born in St. John's on Aug. 11, 1926; died of congestive heart failure in Stephenville, Nfld., on Nov. 21, 1998, aged 72. Gilbert Higgins said he inherited his interest in history from his father: "I honestly think it must be in the blood." Wherever it came from, it was his passion, and by the end of his life he was an awarded archivist, with a houseful of materials stored in every room and even in his stove. (He kept his desk, an 18th-century captain's writing box, in the kitchen.) He grew up in a house stuffed with books, maps and antiques, and attended Newfoundland Historical Society lectures with his father from the age of 10, said his friend Richard Crewe. "Some grow up in a bookish atmosphere and nothing sticks to them. Everything stuck to Gilbert." His parents, John Gilbert Higgins, a lawyer and poet, and Alice Mary Casey, a nurse, had three children: Gilbert was the oldest. Die-hard anti-Confederates, they hung black crepe over the door when Newfoundland joined Confederation. Mr. Crewe remembers Gilbert, privy to adult political conversations, sharing the gossip with the children. His father became the first leader of the opposition Progressive Conservatives, and the first PC Senator from Newfoundland. Unlike his Rhodes Scholar father, Gilbert was not a good student. He twice enrolled at Memorial University and twice dropped out. Unexpectedly, for someone known from youth as a carelessly dressed non-conformist, he enlisted and served in the Korean War. After that he returned to Newfoundland and earned university degrees in history and education. In 1968 he moved to Stephenville, a place he had first seen as a 10-year-old on a salmon-fishing trip with his father. He taught high school, and acquired so many varied volunteer commitments that in 1983 he was named Stephenville's citizen of the year. At the same time he began founding or nurturing various cultural organizations, including The Association of Newfoundland and Labrador Archivists, the Museum Association, the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Newfoundland Historic Trust, and the Newfoundland Historic Society. He was considered an authority on Newfoundland history, particularly of the west coast; anyone seeking information would commonly be told to "ask Gilbert." "He was a very important leader in the heritage community in an era when it was really forming," said Penny Houlden, a civil servant hired by Mr. Higgins for her first important job in the field. He also worked as a librarian. Soon after moving to Stephenville, he asked a woman directions to the regional library. She turned out to be on the library board; within 24 hours Mr. Higgins was the new chairman. The board had little money and the library had no indoor plumbing. Mr. Higgins got to work and in 1971 the new Kindale Library was opened. Soon Mr. Higgins was chief librarian. Meanwhile, he collected maps, papers, files, letters, books (including a rare copy of the third volume of Daniel Prowse's 1895 History of Newfoundland), artifacts, any scrap that interested him. His collection is left to the Sir Wilfred Grenfell College library, and Memorial's Centre for Newfoundland Studies. Such a collection brought national interest. In 1997 he was featured in Wayne Rostad's On The Road Again. But, to his regret, he was not considered eccentric enough for Bill Richardson's collection Scorned and Beloved. "He would have loved to have been called eccentric," said Ms. Houlden. "And he was very noisy! He loved to chat and have fun and make jokes, always at his own expense. And he was an incredible friend to people from all walks of life. He had wide interests, and a range of friends. Someone just told me he was president of the Taximan's Association." Mr. Higgins, who never married, was an entertaining host. At his 65th birthday party, Mr. Higgins supplied what a local paper described as "some fairly strong punch," quoted Thomas More, and thanked "every lovely child who looked at me with wide-open eyes and said, 'I want a book on dinosaurs.'

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