Neil Richards, Library Assistant, stands in the Murray (Main) Library; likely taken at the time of the inaugural presentation of the President's Service Medal.

Bio/Historical Note: Born 11 May 1947 in Bowmanville, Ontario, Neil Richards, BA, SOM, arrived in Saskatoon in 1971 and almost immediately acquired a special place in his heart for the University of Saskatchewan Library. Richards began his 29-year career at the University Library in the reference department and later transferred to the special collections department. In 1995 he was awarded the first ever President’s Service Award for his outstanding contributions to the learning and working environment at the University of Saskatchewan. Even after retirement, he continued to devote at least three hours a day to Special Collections, helping to discover and acquire research materials of interest. Throughout his time as an employee, Richards entrusted his enormous collection of LGBTQ archives to the University of Saskatchewan library. It was one of the earliest and largest collections of LGBTQ interest to be acquired by a Canadian public archive. It was rightfully named the Neil Richards Collection of Sexual and Gender Diversity. “Among the collection's particular strengths are holdings of LGBTQ2+ periodicals, books by Canadian authors and publishers, queer mystery and detective fiction, and titles of both nonfiction and fiction (including pulp novels) which predate the Stonewall Riots of 1969 and the beginning of the Gay Liberation Movement,” reads the collection description. To Richards, the collection was the culmination of his life’s work. Outside of his work at the U of S, Richards played an extremely important role in the Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and Canadian gay communities. In the 1970s he instigated marches and organized conferences around the country. Richards was a member of the ‘Committee to Defend Doug Wilson’, a group to lobby for Doug Wilson, a teacher at the University of Saskatchewan, whose teaching duties were restricted after his sexual orientation become public. The other committee members were Pat Atkinson, Jean Burgess, Gens Hellquist, Deb Hopkins, Diane Nicolson, Skip Kutz, Mel and Kate McCorriston, Peter Millard, Richard Nordahl, Neil Richards, Bill Slights, Judith Varga, the Honourable Justice Catherine Wedge, and Norman Zepp. Ultimately the case led to a resolution being passed by the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour asking the government to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. In the 1980s, Richards took part in Saskatchewan’s earliest AIDS awareness initiatives and aimed to provide an inclusive place for those in his community; not always an easy undertaking at a time when gay rights and the AIDS crisis were at the forefront of many political debates and often times stigmatized. Richards died suddenly 12 January 2018 in Saskatoon. In May 2018, his legacy was remembered with the posthumous awarding of the Saskatchewan Order of Merit, making him what appears to be the first openly LGBTQ2+ person to receive the award.