Susan Buggey had a long and committed interest in cultural landscapes. As former Director of Historical Services at Parks Canada, she played a key role in developing the concept of cultural landscapes within the Historic Sites program. Susan also participated in UNESCO’s international expert meetings to develop guidelines for the inclusion of cultural landscape on to the World Heritage List. World Heritage continued to hold strong interest for her and she remained active in this area until very recently. Over the course of her career, she published widely on cultural landscapes, but was perhaps most closely associated with her research and writing on the topic of Aboriginal cultural landscapes. Susan made a significant contribution to the development of the concept, along with the notion of associative values of cultural landscapes. She also taught historic landscape conservation and cultural landscapes at the Universities of Manitoba and Victoria. Following retirement from Parks Canada she was the Adjunct Professor in the School of Landscape Architecture at the Université de Montréal. Susan was also a founder of the Alliance for Historic Landscape Preservation and a fellow of the Association for Preservation Technology. She was actively engaged for more than 35 years in national and international organizations related to heritage conservation including the ICOMOS/IFLA International Scientific Committee on Cultural Landscapes and a working group of IUCN’s World Commission on Protected Areas.
Susan was a great friend to Willowbank and it was through her generous gift to the school two years ago that we are able to encourage students interested in cultural landscapes by providing financial assistance through the Susan Buggey Cultural Landscape Fellowship.
Although I only met her briefly, Susan’s generosity and bright spirit influenced my path into the heritage field, and I am so grateful for that. Her contribution to Willowbank’s fellowship grants encouraged me to go deeper into understanding cultural landscape theory, and her work has been a clear guide to Canada’s unique cultural landscape perspective. Upon meeting her, I felt her genuine interest in emerging work and was instantly inspired by her kindness and humble curiosity.
– Angela Garvey – Susan Buggey Fellow 2013