A longtime donor to King's, Ann Pituley (nee Crooks), BSc'57, was looking for a new way to show her support. "I wasn't able to build a building or endow a chair, but I thought there must be something I can do," she says. A story in the Winter 2024 issue of Tidings, King's alumni magazine, piqued her interest and set things in motion. A look at some of the treasures in the King's archives, the story found points of fascination in a subject that is often overlooked.
"While working on family genealogy, I became aware of the importance of accurate records. I was interested in all the things they were doing in the archives and what they still need to do to preserve the university's history, and by extension, a part of the province's history. I thought, Maybe I can help with that.'"
A flurry of discussions between King's Librarian and Archivist Tracy Lenfesty, Director of Advancement Adriane Abbott and President William Lahey, crystalized a purpose for Pituley's generous gift of $260,000. The gift will allow the library to hire, for the first time, a full-time archivist for 18 months to create an online holdings system and make substantial inroads in the digitization of King's archival collections. "At the moment we have a small presence through MemoryNS, hosted by the Council of Nova Scotia Archives, but space is very limited," Lenfesty explains. Now the archivist will be able to upload images and the first project will likely be a crowd-pleaser. "The first thing we will do is scan and upload all our yearbooks so that alumni can explore them online," she adds. "From there, we have a large collection of photographs we want to organize and upload." The collection is a fascinating record of life at King's from its earliest days in Windsor to an ever-changing present.
Now documents, images and records that the King's archives have been carefully preserving, materials that chronicle the history of the university and the larger community, will begin to be digitized and available to academics and historians around the world.
The second part of Ann Pituley's gift will support another essential project: the hiring of a records manager who will implement a management system for university records built on international standards and best practices.
This is not Pituley's first gift to the university; each year since 2012, the Ann M. Crooks Science Award is presented to a woman enrolled in a BSc program who has maintained a GPA of 3.0 or higher, with preference given to those in financial need. "There still aren't enough women being encouraged to go into science so I thought a little extra money might help," Pituley says, in her characteristically understated way.
While at King's, Pituley was the only woman studying geology and was one of three women in her Dalhousie geology classes. She was recruited before graduating by the Iron Ore Company of Canada to work at their mines in Schefferville, Quebec and finished her degree in absentia. "It was exciting, and interesting. There was some pushback being a female geologist women weren't supposed to do this stuff in the '50s but for the most part the other geologists accepted me pretty well."
A year and a half into her role at the Iron Ore Company of Canada, Pituley married Lawrence Pituley, a fellow geologist. With company rules dictating that husband and wife could not work in the same department, she gave up her career. They raised three children in Quebec and Labrador mining towns before moving to Calgary where Pituley went back to school, studying economics at the University of Calgary. In 2008, she and her husband moved to Abbotsford B.C. where their daughter lives.
King's has been a part of Pituley's own history since she was very young she grew up just a few blocks from the university campus. "I always wanted to go to King's. I never considered another university." Still an active alum, she recently joined some fellow graduates from the 1950s on a Zoom call to reminisce. "I formed some very good friendships at King's and I had some really good times . There's something special about King's."
