Alfred G. Bailey (1905-1997) was born in Quebec City. He served as the first head of the University of New Brunswick history department from 1938 to 1969. His literary interests led to the founding of the Bliss Carman Society in 1940 and to his co-founding of the Fiddlehead, Canada's oldest literary magazine, in 1945. From 1965 to 1969, he served as the university's vice-president academic. He published several scholarly historical and anthropological works, including The Conflict of European and Eastern Algonkian Cultures (1937; 1969). Bailey was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1951 and an officer of the Order of Canada in 1978.