Alexander Reford guest speaker at the British Library
Enlarge Québec historian and Director of the Jardins de Métis, Alexander Reford at the British Library
Photo: DGQL
Québec historian and Director of the Jardins de Métis, Alexander Reford, was the guest speaker at the British Library in London on May 22, 2012. The evening was organized by the Québec Government Office in London in partnership with the Eccles Centre for American Studies.
Mr reford delivered a speech entitled Coming to Quebec: 350 Years of British Travel and Travellers in front of a crowd of over 100 people. His presentation included a historical retrospect of Québec’s discovery by the British as revealed through historical documents collected over the past 350 years. The presentation ended with an overview of the history of the Jardins de Métis, which were created by the speaker’s great grandmother, Elsie Reford.
In addition, an exhibition of Québec historical documents organized by the Eccles Centre for American Studies was presented at the occasion of this conference. The public had the opportunity to discover documents wrote notably by Jacques Cartier, Samuel de Champlain, Paul Le Jeune and François Du Creux. The presentation and the exhibition were among the events marking the Québec Government Office’s 50th anniversary.
Alexander Reford holds an M.A. in history from the University of Toronto and the University of Oxford. He was Dean of St. Michael's College at the University of Toronto, a position he left in 1995 to assume the directorship of the Reford Gardens (Jardins de Métis). Mr. Reford, the great-grandson of the gardens’ creator Elsie Reford, is President of Les Amis des Jardins de Métis, a non-profit association founded for the purpose of acquiring the gardens from the Québec government in 1995.
