First, I want to thank James Opp, who has investigated and began the process of implementing a new funding initiative, improving the remuneration of Marielle Campeau, and other matters detailed in his report. Similarly, I draw attention to and express my appreciation to Craig Heron for his advice and continuing intervention in what I’m becoming convinced may be the perennial problems with library and archives.

Next, I must acknowledge and express my admiration for the members of the Executive and Council who take on sometimes considerable responsibilities for liaison with the planning committee for the annual meeting and with IHAF (to wit, Jean Martin), oversight of publications (Alexandra Mosquin and Michele Dagenais) and prizes (Jerry Bannister and John Lutz) and leadership in portfolios, notably the always demanding Advocacy Portfolio (namely, Tina Loo). So far as I am able to judge, our relations with Concordia, our publications, and our many advocacy initiatives have been impressive.

I also extend my thanks to Michel Duquet, who has introduced the changes in reporting that we requested at the previous Executive meeting, facilitated the teleconferences, set up the on-line membership system and other contributions to the operations of the CHA too numerous to mention here. He will have more details on the organizational and technical services introduced, but I would like to report that there was great interest in our experiment with the CFHSS membership system at the General Assembly of the CFHSS. As always, we have benefitted repeatedly from the knowledge and watchfulness of Marielle Campeau, who has been active in alerting us about legal requirements and conventional practices of the CHA.

I will add to this list an enthusiastic thanks to Barbara Lorenkzowski and all the organizers of the annual meeting. The conference theme about telling stories/storytelling proved to be very inclusive, both of scholars across Canada and especially from Quebec, but also of fields other than Canadian history. I counted at least 45 panellists whose specialty was non-Canadian history and contacted each of them for which I had e-mail addresses to invite them to the Internationalist working meeting on Monday May 31st.

Several Executive and Council members are leaving us this year, and I will send letters to each of them expressing our gratitude for their service to the CHA. On the Executive, this includes Jean Martin, after years of serving as the French language secretary as well as undertaking the assignments noted above. Alexandra Mosquin has decided to stay on at least another year as secretary in order to ensure some continuity at the Bulletin. On the Council, the departing members are Michèle Dagenais, whose work on publications has already been noted and who will continue to serve as liaison to the International History Conference; Betsy Jameson, who has been liaison with the Chairs of History Department in the past and currently with the Affiliated Committees, as well as Chair of the new Equity Committee, and Tina Loo, whose work as Chair of the Advocacy Portfolio has also been noted. To all of them, I tender our gratitude and best wishes for the future.

I am supposed to be at an arms length from the Nominating Committee, so I will simply acknowledge those who are leaving and commend them for a fine job of generating candidates for the various committees. The slate is most impressive.

Aside from collaborating with some of the committees—and notably writing many letters of thanks to outgoing editors and boards of editors for our publications and even more letters of congratulation to the short list of candidates for our many prizes—my major activities (I won’t say accomplishments) have been to visit the LAC in lieu of a meeting with Daniel Caron, Director of the LAC, in March, and writing the first and final drafts of the CHA response to the proposed changes in the SSHRCC architecture in April.

As I reported to the Executive, the visit to the archives mainly consisted of learning more about the situation there, reporting a few complaints, mainly about the Service Advisory Board, and being shown the elaborate facilities, including preservation labs, in Gatineau. I was treated politely but given no assurances about any of our issues. Craig will have more to tell us about this situation. I recommend taking a tour of the Gatineau facilities, if, as I suggested, they offered some in the near future.

The response to the changes in SSHRC architecture have been posted on the web site, with a link under the Latest News rubric. I’d like to explain that I wrote the initial and final response because the deadline was close and Tina Loo was ill, and second, because I had had two occasions to hear from SSHRC spokesmen and interested parties at Board meetings of the CFHSS. I asked for input from the Executive and the Advocacy Committee and thank those who responded. Appropriate changes were made before I circulated the response to the Executive for approval prior to sending and posting it.

I hope to work closely next year with the incoming Vice-President, Lyle Dick. I believe that some of the procedures that Michel, the Executive and I are working out will be as helpful to him, when he replaces me, as they have been to me. They will be doubly useful if he has been involved before taking over as President.

Mary Lynn Stewart