The International Council on Archives has elected Marcel Caya the organisation's first ever ICA Fellow. This appointment, made in accordance with article 12 of the Constitution, was unanimously approved at the Annual General Meeting in Québec City on 16 November. The award of a Fellowship recognises Marcel's outstanding contribution to ICA.

He was a member of the Steering Committee of the ICA Section of Professional Associations (SPA) from 1983, which he chaired SPA between 1988 and1992. Editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of ICA from 1992, he was appointed Deputy Secretary General in September 2000, after the Seville Congress. He has initiated and driven forward projects and has contributed greatly to the success of governance meetings, not least through his high quality minute taking. He has gone out of his way to explain the way ICA works to colleagues with a limited command of its working languages.

Marcel was McGill University Archivist from 1977 to 1994, serving as Director General of the McCord Museum of Canadian History from 1984 to 1988. Since 1994, he has taught records and archives management at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).

One of the founding members of the Bureau of Canadian Archivists, he was President of AAQ (Association of Archivists of Québec) in 1985-1986.

His archival research work has mainly dealt with the monetary appraisal of archives and archival standardization, with an emphasis on descriptive standards. In 1999 he completed the preparation of a data bank on archival standards in French and English practice which is now available on the website of the Canadian Council on Archives.

Marcel continues to be active in ICA through his leadership of the Archipaedia project, which will develop a multi-lingual glossary of key archival terms. He is also heavily involved in the development of PIAF, the online training resource for archive professionals in the French-speaking world.