For many years, all of David’s papers were in housed in a small filing cabinet and a mountain of cardboard boxes in our apartment’s storage room. In 2001, I bought a huge lateral filing cabinet and sorted through the papers, filing them all. It was fun, and helped me to learn more about David’s career. I was surprised to find newspaper articles about Leaving Home having been banned at two schools in the 1970s, for example. And I loved seeing all the original programs and production shots. David was a bit of a packrat, so I turned up old shopping lists and decades worth of Christmas cards, too!
David and I once had a conversation about archives. I mentioned that a lot of playwrights were sending their papers to the University of Guelph, where the Tarragon Theatre’s archives are housed. David said that he knew that, but that many years earlier, Memorial University had asked him for his papers, and he felt that was where they should ultimately be sent.
About a year after David died, I started to think about the papers. They were still in our storage room, and one summer we had had a leak that narrowly missed the big filing cabinet. I knew that the papers would be safer at a university, and that it would be good to have them in a place where they could be made available for researchers. One day I called Memorial University. I wasn’t sure who to contact, so I dialed the number for the Library, figuring that I’d have to talk to several people and perhaps be told to write a letter or email about the papers…Instead, as soon as I explained who I was and why I was calling, the voice on the other end of the phone in St. John’s exclaimed, “David French! Of course! We’d love to have his papers in the archives here.” So immediately, I knew that Memorial had indeed been the right choice.
It took me a long time to actually pack up the papers. Going through them again was in some ways quite difficult. I laughed, I cried…But eventually, I had seven large IKEA tubs of notebooks, drafts, letters, photos, programs, and other papers ready for Purolator to take to Newfoundland.
Colleen Quigley and her colleagues at Memorial have been terrific. I know the papers are in very good hands.
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