Dr Robert Wilson, 2011
by Bob Lansdale
Toronto My good friend and fellow PHSC member Bob Wilson passed away late Wednesday this week. Bob joined the PHSC in 1977 after coming to Toronto. Prior to coming here, Bob worked out west as a geologist in the Oil Industry.
I met Bob when he was membership secretary and wanted to convert the PHSC membership list to a computerized version. My company had recently bought a TRS-80 from Radio Shack so we experimented on that system. Some month’s later I transferred to our data centre out in Don Mills and Bob took back the PHSC’s 8 inch floppy disk plus a paper copy of the membership records.
Bob became our membership secretary the summer of 1982 through April 1989 when the post was held briefly by Phil Berkowicz until I took it over November 1989. Bob went on to be the PHSC president for 1997-99. And in 1997, he also earned an Honourary Award for his contribution to photographic history. He continued to monitor and advise on government forms, PHSC by-laws, PHSC elections, etc. He was an expert on books, stereo, and images. Until very recently he did the Photographic Canadiana journal sorting and distribution for domestic addresses.
Bob managed the record keeping at our auctions and was a regular at the society fairs with his large selection of books. He and May even contributed to the Toronto meetings for many years by managing the monthly refreshments.
In later executive meetings, he wrote and kept the meeting minutes, back-up procedures, etc. as well as contributing his wisdom to assess the value of some image and equipment donations. His ideas helped to improve our society. Bob wrote a photographic historical text on Benjamin Baltzly plus a great many journal articles.
Bob was a quiet but important part of the PHSC with his broad knowledge and skills. I will post funeral and celebration of life arrangements as they become known. NOTE: see obituary in Saturday’s Globe (May 18th) for more information.
