Robin Letellier passed away in Philadelphia on April 20, 2007. He graduated in architecture in 1969 from Laval University in Quebec City, Canada. One of his first jobs was to prepare the as-found drawings of the Dauphine Redoubt, an early-eighteenth-century masonry building built by the French in Quebec City. From that day on, he continued to be passionate about recording and documentation and went on to become one of the leaders in this field not only in Canada, but internationally. His career blossomed during more than thirty years working for Canadian government agencies responsible for the conservation of National Historic Sites.

During that time Robin was also enthusiastically involved in international activities through the ICOMOS-CIPA Heritage Documentation international specialized committee. In those days, though Robin was a young professional, he was considered to have avant-garde ideas about heritage recording. He was a pioneer in Canada and internationally in the development and application of stereophotogrammetry and laser scanning as well as social programs such as “Family Album,” a children awareness program for documenting their families’ histories. Early on he was of the opinion that recording specialists—“the providers” —were not connected enough to the “users” of documentation products and services. He dedicated the later part of his life to the RecorDIM Initiative (Recording, Documentation, and Information Management) that brought together many of the world’s leading specialists in this field and produced a number of innovative tools and applications contributing to the advancement of the field.  During his time at the University of Pennsylvania, Robin and then chairman Frank Matero discussed plans to convene an international symposium dedicated to exploring contemporary practices of heritage recording and documentation.  That symposium and the papers selected for publication are dedicated to Robin Letellier and his steadfast vision.

The full article is available at Project Muse.

Image: Francois LeBlanc (right) with Robin Letellier discussing the RecorDIM initiative. (Mario Santana Quintero)