The Many Accolades of Marjorie Goodfellow

By Jazmine Aldrich (ETRC Head Archivist) and Etienne Domingue (ETRC Director)

For many Townshippers, “Marjorie Goodfellow” is a household name. Marjorie Elizabeth Goodfellow (1938-2024) was the only child of Edgar and Annie (née McElrea) Goodfellow, Ms. Goodfellow was born and raised in Sherbrooke. She spent much of her life on her family’s farm on Chemin des Écossais. She earned two undergraduate degrees in two of Quebec’s anglophone universities (Bishop’s University ‘59 and McGill University ‘60), followed by a Master of Library Science degree (McGill University ‘67) that would launch her career in the library world. Ms. Goodfellow worked in Ottawa and Montreal before returning to the Townships following the death of her father in 1971. She continued to work as a library consultant and a genealogical and historical researcher—a passion that remained with her until the very end of her life. 

​Ms. Goodfellow is remembered by many as a founding member of the Townshippers’ Association where she defended the rights of English speakers to the provincial and federal governments. She was adamant that the same standards in healthcare should apply to members of both official language communities and served on the Board of Directors of the CUSE (now the CHUS) for 13 years. The Quebec government chose Ms. Goodfellow to represent the Eastern Townships on a provincial committee to advise the minister of health on service issues in the English-speaking community.

​Ms. Goodfellow nurtured a passion for local history, sitting on the Board of Directors of the Sherbrooke Historical Society and was a founding member of the Eastern Townships Heritage Foundation—the precursor to the Eastern Townships Resource Centre. She also helped found the Sherbrooke and District University Women’s Club and the Sherbrooke Library Board. In 1985, she became a Trustee Member of Bishop’s University and was part of the University’s Planning Committee. In 1993, Bishop’s University conferred Ms. Goodfellow with an Honorary Doctoral Degree in Civil Law. 

Ms. Goodfellow was involved with the Eastern Townships Resource Centre from its founding, serving many terms on the ETRC Board of Directors and the ETRC Archives Committee. Her passion for Eastern Townships history and her confidence in the ETRC led her to entrust her rich documentary legacy to our archives. Though she began depositing archival material with the ETRC in 2010, she held on to much of it until the end of her life – drawing on material for her yet-unpublished manuscript.

The ETRC received generous funding through QAHN’s Supporting Heritage Awareness, Recognition and Engagement (SHARE) program to begin processing the extensive and complex Marjorie Goodfellow fonds (P180), which comprises the largest single donation of archival material received by the ETRC to date. This grant also supported the inaugural Goodfellow Memorial Keynote Address—a public lecture given at the 2026 edition of Quebec Past and Present: the 14^th Colloquium on Quebec Studies, hosted by the ETRC at Bishop’s University on March 27 and 28.

Dr. Thierry Nootens—director of the Centre interuniversitaire d’études québécoises and professor at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières delivered this year’s lecture. Dr. Nootens drew upon the Marjorie Goodfellow fonds as the basis of his presentation, following several wintry days spent poring over the semi-processed archives.

Dr. Nootens’ talk was entitled “’Will you see if you can find my white Ban-Lon sweater’ : les lettres de Marjorie Goodfellow à ses parents, 1959-1961” and took place on Saturday, March 28 at 11:15 am in Bishop’s University’s Tomlinson Hall, located on the ground floor of McGreer Hall. Dr. Nootens delivered his talk in French with a bilingual question and answer period. The first of its kind, the ETRC hopes to make the Goodfellow Memorial Keynote Address an annual tradition to underscore Ms. Goodfellow’s innumerable contributions to our organization and to Quebec heritage, more broadly.

Meanwhile, the project to process the Marjorie Goodfellow fonds is progressing well and we are looking forward to sharing the product of this monumental effort, later this summer. We are grateful for the support that QAHN has provided in order to ensure that Ms. Goodfellow’s legacy is preserved through her archives, and that her mission lives on through the ETRC’s public programming.