'William Kaye Lamb',
OC,
FRSC, (
May 11,
1904 -
August 24,
1999) was a
Canadian historian, archivist, librarian and civil servant.
Born in
New Westminster, British Columbia, he received his B.A. in
1927 and M.A. in
1930 from the
University of British Columbia. He completed his Ph.D. at the
London School of Economics in
1933, under the tutelage of
Harold Laski. From
1934 to
1940, he was the Provincial Archivist and Librarian of
British Columbia. In
1936, he was also appointed Superintendent of the BC Public Libraries Commission. From 1940 to
1948, he was the University Librarian of the University of British Columbia. From 1948 to
1968 he was the
Dominion Archivist of Canada and from
1953 to
1967 he was the first National Librarian of Canada.
In
1949, he was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society of Canada and was its president from
1965 to
1966. In
1969, he was made an Officer of the
Order of Canada.
Lamb specialized in the early history of British Columbia. He edited and wrote a number of scholarly books relating to explorers of Western Canada such as
George Vancouver,
Daniel Williams Harmon, and Sir
Alexander MacKenzie, as well as a volume on the history of the
Canadian Pacific Railway.
In
1939, he married Wessie Tipping. They had a daughter, Elizabeth (Lamb) Hawkins.