Barry M Gough

Education

Gough was educated at Victoria High School, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Montana. While earning his Ph.D. at King's College London, he was tutored in the maritime foundations of imperial history by G. S. Graham, Rhodes Professor of Imperial History in the University of London. In addition to the earned doctorate, Gough was in 1991 awarded a Doctorate of Literature from University of London for distinguished contributions to Imperial and Commonwealth history. His thesis research on the Esquimalt naval base and seapower and geopolitics across the Pacific Rim was published as The Royal Navy and the Northwest Coast of North America, 1810-1914: A Study of British Maritime Ascendancy, the scholarly book marking the inauguration of UBC Press. An expanded edition, Britannia's Navy on the West Coast of North America, 1812-1914, was published by Heritage House in 2016.

Teaching and consulting

Initially joining the teaching staff of Victoria High School, Gough became in turn Lecturer, Assistant and Associate Professor at Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA, and Co-director of the Centre for Pacific Northwest Studies. From 1972 to 2004 in the history faculty at Wilfrid Laurier University, he was Associate Professor, Professor and University Research Professor. He was founding director of Canadian Studies at Laurier, served as coordinator of Interdisciplinary Studies and Assistant Dean of Arts, and on retirement was appointed University Professor Emeritus.

His writings, including young adult non-fiction and coursework for civilian and military personnel, are used in various teaching contexts. Gough was advisory editor to Macmillan Publishing for World Explorers and Discoverers (1992)) and to Scribner’s for Explorers: From Ancient Times to the Space Age (1998), and he was editor-in-chief of the magazine American Neptune based at the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts (1997-2003). Following on from the 2014 book From Classroom to Battlefield, he published suggestions on how to write a history of a Canadian high school and the First World War: the approach and methodology of the historian, materials available for use, and guidance to the historical background.

Contract work in history has included Great Lakes shipwrecks research, the Alaska inland waters case on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice and research materials for the Nuu Chah Nulth. He was asked to prepare a historical legal claims dossier for the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council in the Meares Island case.

Since 2007, he has been Adjunct Professor of War Studies and History, Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ont. Gough has had visiting appointments and lectureships at University of Otago, Duke University, the University of British Columbia, Australian National University, University of Natal, National University of Singapore, King's College University of London, and the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, U.K.

Affiliations and affinities

Barry Gough is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Fellow of King's College London, UK, and Archives By-Fellow Churchill College, Cambridge, UK. He is Paul Harris Fellow of Rotary International and Honorary Research Associate, Malaspina Research Centre, Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo, B.C. He is also a Serving Brother of the Order of St. John.

He is a former president of the British Columbia Historical Federation, and in May 2016 was named BCHF honorary president, an "ambassadorial" or "historian laureate" role he understands as "a sort of spokesman and advocate for B.C. history." The federation, with ninety-nine member societies and roughly 25,000 members in B.C., works to recognize the historical preservation work being done through local museums, archives, collections and special projects, and honours those involved. Gough is Past President of the Canadian Nautical Research Society, Past President of the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Vancouver Island, and past member of the Board of Academic Advisers, The Churchill Centre, Chicago. He is a Life Member of the Association of Canadian Studies, founding member of the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States and past chair of the joint committee, American Historical Association – Canadian Historical Association. He lectures on maritime and naval topics and on Canadian history and public affairs.

Gough is former Chair, Victoria High School Alumni Association, and is actively engaged in advancing the interests of the Maritime Museum of BC and Craigdarroch Castle Heritage Society in Victoria, B.C., and of the Vancouver Maritime Museum in Vancouver, B.C. He is a long-time member of the non-profit society Universal Jazz Advocates and Mentors (U-JAM) and as jazz clarinettist performed at Victoria International JazzFest 2014.

Awards

The British Maritime Foundation announced in November 2015 that Pax Britannica: Ruling the Waves and Keeping the Peace before Armageddon, on the role of the Royal Navy in shaping the British Empire and guarding its commerce, won the Mountbatten Literary Award 2015 for best literary contribution to the understanding of the importance of the seas. "I've always felt the seas were blindsided in the writing of Canadian history, and I have made it my own particular calling to turn that around," Gough said in 1994.

The U.K. award was followed in September 2016 by the highest award bestowed by the Washington State Historical Society, the Robert Gray Medal, for lifetime achievement.

Dr. Gough has received the Psi Upsilon Distinguished Service Alumnus Award, the Wilfrid Laurier University Alumni Hoffmann-Little Award for Outstanding Teaching, the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal and the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. In November 2014, Her Honour Judith Guichon, Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia, presented him with the Maritime Museum of B.C.'s 2014 SS Beaver Medal for Maritime Excellence. The Hallmark Heritage Society chose Vic High alumni Gough's study of teachers and students in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, From Classroom to Battlefield: Victoria High School and the First World War, for its Communication Award.

Prizes have included the Clio Prize of the Canadian Historical Association and medals, awards and honourable mentions from a number of organizations: the North American Society for Oceanic History, the Writers Trust of Canada Non-Fiction Prize, the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize, B.C. Book Prizes, and the Lieutenant-Governor’s Medal for Historical Writing given by the British Columbia Historical Federation. Historical Dreadnoughts: Arthur Marder, Stephen Roskill and Battles for Naval History was chosen by the Canadian Nautical Research Society for its 2010 Keith Matthews Award, named in honour of the society's first president to recognize outstanding publications in the field of nautical research. Gunboat Frontier: British Maritime Authority and Northwest Coast Indians, 1846-1890 won the same award in 1985, and The Northwest Coast: British Navigation, Trade, and Discoveries to 1812 earned honourable mention in 1993.

Published works

A working historian and educator in maritime and naval scholarship, particularly of Pacific Northwest maritime history, Gough has also directed attention to the interior and northern regions of British Columbia. His 1997 account of Sir Alexander Mackenzie's overland explorations to the Arctic and Pacific coasts, First Across the Continent, continues as a central contribution to the study of North American exploration in the 18th and 19th centuries. Pax Britannica in 2014 has as its theme the intersection of British imperial and naval history during the post-Napoleonic nineteenth century. Britannia's Navy two years later documents within that global context a century of events in the Northern Pacific, jurisdictional disputes and developments in the U.S. and evolution of British Columbia's naval base at Esquimalt. Gough’s books have received prizes in the United States, the U.K., Spain and Canada.