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PROGRAMME
Third Archives in Canada Conference
ARCHIVES AND THE CANADIAN NARRATIVE --
RE: TELLING CANADA'S STORIES AND REGIONAL ARCHIVES IN THE DIGITAL UNIVERSE.
Wednesday June 10 2009
7 pm Reading by David Adams Richards – open to the community, Mount Allison Owens Art Gallery
Sponsored by Library and Archives Canada, McMaster University Library, and Mount Allison University Centre for Canadian Studies
Followed by:
Reception for conference attendees, sponsored by the Office of the President, Mount Allison University
Sessions on Thursday and Friday June 11 & 12 will take place in Mount Allison’s Wallace McCain Student Centre building. Specific room allocations will be posted outside the main meeting room, Tweedie Hall.
Thursday June 11
9-10:30 Keynote Address by Noah Richler, Tweedie Hall, McCain Student Centre
Sponsored by Library and Archives Canada, McMaster University Library, and Mount Allison University Centre for Canadian Studies
10:30-11:00 break, Tweedie Hall
11:00 -12:30 3 concurrent sessions:
A) Constructing Archival Narratives for Canada
This session provides critical readings of the role of archivists and archival institutions in shaping the narrative(s) about Canada. Archivists actively shape the archival fonds through their professional functions, constructing new systems of cultural authority. What are the implications of making documentation of these processes available to researchers? In Canada, the National Museum formed the narrative about Canada’s aboriginal nations by defining who could speak; national archival initiatives are mapped using a model of institutional subjectivity. How can such institutional subjectivity be circumvented?
Chair: Robert Cupido (Mount Allison University)
1) Heather Dean & Kristan Cook – Provincial Archives of Alberta and Beinecke Library -- Navigating the Narrative: Archives, Documentation, and the Writing of History.
2) Andrew Nurse – Mount Allison University – Archives as Narrative: Constructions of the National Museum of Canada’s Traditional Culture Archives, 1910-1955.
B) Questioning Narratives about Literature and Place: Choices and Epistemologies
How do archives engage in the interrogation of place and setting? This session presents discussion of resistance to “the city” by Vancouver’s mid-century modernists, as well as examining how digital environments recapture and reflect the unreality of Canada’s regional modernisms. Archival sources and local history challenge canonical narratives about the city of Fredericton through the lens of George Elliott Clarke’s Execution Poems. Archival sources also present questions for the recent re-writing of Quebec literary history. How do private and intimate archival documents suffer under the construction of a narrative which seeks to be authentic and rigorous?
Chair: Rob Summerby-Murray (Mount Allison University)
3) Jen Andrews – University of New Brunswick – Rewriting Fredericton’s Poetic Heritage: Re-Telling Canada’s Stories.
4) Dean Irvine – Dalhousie University – Unreal Archives: Digital Regions and Regional Modernisms in Canada (virtual presentation).
5) Manon Brunet – Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières – Raconter l'histoire littéraire avec ou sans les archives.
C) Archival Outreach, Interaction and Repositioning
This session discusses the role of the researcher in forming a narrative from archival sources. A filmmaker engages with the archival record of the City of Winnipeg; MAA and PAA Theatre performs plays based on the holdings of the Provincial Archives of Alberta and a researcher discusses her experience researching Emily Carr. As creative narratives emerge from the archives, what are our responsibilities in terms of truth, evidence and storytelling?
Chair: Gwen Davies (University of New Brunswick)
6) Jody Baltessen – City of Winnipeg Archives – In Search of Ourselves: The Historical Imperative in Winnipeg.
7) Karen Simonson and David Cheoros – Provincial Archives of Alberta & Edmonton International Literary Festival – “The play’s the thing:” Bringing Archives to New Audiences.
8) Linda Morra – Bishop’s University – (Im)material Exchanges: The Role of Researchers in Archival Research.
12:30-1:30 Light Lunch, sponsored by Mount Allison University Libraries and Archives, Tweedie Hall
1:30-3:00 3 concurrent sessions:
D) Archival Materiality, Immateriality and Oral History
This session discusses responsibility to the archival document in its many forms. What are the ways in which researchers can use the material forms and states of records as evidence? How does this activity change with reproduction? What is the role of digital reproductions and virtual exhibits? How do oral history records help us to see the dangers of physical deterioration and the possibilities and challenges of the digital?
Chair: Robert Richard (Université de Moncton)
9) Melissa McCarthy – Council of Archives, New Brunswick – Physicality as Apotheosis: The Changing Role of Paper in the Digital Age.
10) Ala Rekrut –Archives of Manitoba and University of Manitoba/University of Winnipeg. – Connected Constructions, Constructed Connections: Materiality of Archival Records as Historical Evidence.
11) Ronald Labelle – Université de Moncton – Les archives sonores non archivées: un patrimoine en perdition.
E) Unearthing Lost Stories/ Creating Literary Histories
What role do archives have in the search for truthful evidence about individuals? How can this search for historical truth be hampered by fragmented or confusing archival material, wrongly attributed published versions or pre-existing misleading representations?
Chair: Carrie MacMillan (Mount Allison University)
12) Jodi Aoki – Trent University – The letters of Frances Stewart: two centuries of layered representation.
13) Michael Peterman –Trent University – Unearthing vital signs of an erased poet: the search for James McCarroll (1814-1892).
F) Groundswell: Creators and Scholars Discovering the Narrative
The session explores how researchers augment archival holdings to reflect the lives of people and communities. The discovery of a family archives which changes perceptions and balances the historical record about German Canadians in the Waterloo Region is explored. The role of academic women as activists in expanding women’s archival collections is also discussed, in particular the work of a group trying to preserve women’s life stories in Alberta over the last 20 years.
Chair: Marie Hammond-Callaghan (Mount Allison University)
14) Jane Britton – University of Waterloo – Discovering the Breithaupt Family Papers.
15) Nanci Langford – Athabasca University – Academic Women as Activists in Archives.
3:00-3:30 break, Tweedie Hall
3:30-5:00 2 concurrent sessions:
G) Digital Presence/Digital Pressures
This session investigates the advantages and disadvantages of telling archival stories via an online presence. The creation of a regional online resource, the construction of a narrative from selected archival sources and the efficacy of digital archives are considered. How can efforts to reach a younger audience in their familiar digital world actually be counter-productive? Are these on-line products credible reflections of actual holdings or simply examples of disembodied narrative?
Chair: Kathy Garay (McMaster University)
16) Wendy Robicheau – Acadia University – Telling the Right Stories; Sending the Wrong Message?
17) Karen Smith – Dalhousie University – Past Imperfect: Selection and Context in the Creation of Digital Resources.
18) Rob Summerby-Murray – Mount Allison University – Marshland Memories: Issues in the Creation of an Online Digital Archive Resource.
H) Genre and Cultural Spaces: Narrative and Dominant Cultural forms
This session discusses how archival sources inform our understandings of architectural space, architectural norms and the formation of an archival site of publishing history. What do archives tell us about the narratives of such cultural spaces as Toronto bathhouses, postwar Canadian houses and one of Canada’s most venerable sites of cultural production?
Chair: Monica Boeringer (Mount Allison University)
19) Ioana Teodorescu -- McGill University -- ¬Letters and Plans: The Archival Correspondence behind CMHC Plan Catalogues.
20) Ruth Panofsky – Ryerson University – The Macmillan Archive: Site of Cultural Preservation.
Evening event – Performance by La Corde à Vent, sponsored by the Centre d'études
acadiennes, Université de Moncton. McCain Student Centre pub
Friday June 12
9:00-10:30 Panel
I) Telling Canada’s Stories I
Chair: Nancy Vogan (Mount Allison University)
21) Sue Campbell with Kathryn Harvey & Geoffrey Reaume – Dalhousie, Guelph and York University – From Archives to Activism: Building Inclusive Communities through Practices of Collective Memory.
10:30-11:00 break, Tweedie Hall
11:00-12:30 2 concurrent panels
J) Telling Canada’s Stories II
Chair: Kirsty Bell (Mount Allison University)
22) Marie Hammond-Callaghan panel (with Rhianna Edwards and Ashley MacKenzie) – Mount Allison University – The ‘We Were Here’ Archival Project on Local Women's History.
K) Telling Canada’s Stories III
Chair: Catherine Hobbs (Library and Archives Canada)
23) Kim Sawchuk with Nina Czegledy, Mel Hogan, Nancy Marrelli and Nicholas Woolridge – Concordia University – Archiving Medicine: the Case of Grant’s Atlas of Anatomy.
12:30-1:30 Lunch, sponsored by Library and Archives Canada/ Bibliothèque et Archives Canada, Tweedie Hall
Speaker: Doug Rimmer, Assistant Deputy Minister, Library and Archives Canada/ Bibliothèque et Archives Canada, Tweedie Hall
1:30-3:00 3 concurrent sessions:
L) Finding Our Stories in the Archival Margins
This session explores archival material emerging from unexpected sources and the challenges of expanding the narrative on women’s history and the history of sexuality. Newspaper archives can shed new light on the engagement of women writers with the political and social issues of the 19th Century. The difficulties arising while researching at the Toronto Police Museum, an ostensibly public institution, are examined and questions of privacy vs. public accountability are explored.
Chair: Isabelle Cormier (Université de Moncton)
24) Ceilidh Hart – University of Toronto – The Poetess and the Press: Literary History and the Newspaper Archives in Canada.
25) Jennifer Blair – University of Ottawa – “No Excuse for Being Dirty Now”: Early Toronto Bathhouses and Archival Space.
M) Constructing Narratives of Communities and the Role of Regional Archives
The session first addresses the difficulties of tracing the narrative of culturally and linguistically distinct groups in existing archival holdings. Folklorists attempted to capture Acadian culture, traditionally transmitted orally, on magnetic tape. Consignment of this history to the archives slowed and prevented access. The session will also consider key challenges to the operation of small regional archives. What new possibilities and challenges are emerging, particularly from digitization, for these distinct cultural narratives and small cultural institutions?
Chair: Jeanne-Mance Cormier (Université de Moncton)
26) Robert Richard – Université de Moncton – Les archives d’ethnologie acadienne en mutation vers la numérisation : l’accessibilité soulève de nouveaux problèmes.
27) Grant Hurley – Mount Allison University – Money is Time: Case Studies in Small Canadian Regional Archives
N) Rendering the Archival Narrative Visible
This session focuses on the role of archivists and visionaries in shaping the narrative about Canada. The work of several unknown historians shaped Prince Edward Island’s archival beginnings and these records re-create the Island’s part in the post-Confederation narrative. The Canadian archival system was a dream of archives across the country, collaborating in documenting Canadian society. Do such efforts create a better archival record or has the vision foundered in regional and partisan interests?
Chair: Ronald Labelle (Université de Moncton)
28) Michelle McDonald – University of New Brunswick – The Historians behind the Histories: An Archival Glimpse into Prince Edward Island’s Past.
29) Robert Fisher – Library and Archives Canada – Creating an Archival Mosaic: Local and Regional Archives and the Evolution of the Canadian Archival System.
3:00-3:30 break, Tweedie Hall
3:30-4:30 PLENARY- Wrap up discussion (animated by the Programme Committee), Tweedie Hall
Saturday June 13
Optional tour of Fort Beausejour (minimum 20 persons required for operation through Conference)
Registration: $120 regular, $60 graduate students, undergraduates free.
Half fee for one day.
Fee includes opening reception, coffee breaks and Thursday and Friday lunch.
Additional charge for tours.
©2007
Mount Allison University
Maintained by the Centre for Canadian Studies
June 3, 2009