Viewpoint
Celebrating Archives Week

January 23, 2009

By Tim Hutchison

Next week is Archives Week in Saskatchewan, an opportunity to highlight the often silent role archives and archivists play in our society. Local archivists are organizing free public events to help mark the week, and to give people a chance to see archives in action.

In Saskatoon, the first Archives Week event will be "Spotlight on the Past: Archival Readings from Archives in Saskatchewan." This is the second edition of a very successful event initiated last year. Many writers will read from a variety of documents housed in local archives. There's quite a range of readings to be found – poignant, informative and funny.

As I write this, we are finalizing this year's readings, but let me give you a taste from last year. Allan Blakeney related advice for CCF canvassers, circa 1940s—in recruiting for the cause, canvassers were told, "no one should be considered hopeless." Don Kerr read from a 1920s will left by a rancher who had it in for farmers: "I leave to each and every mossback my perpetual curse, as some reward to them for their labors in destroying the open range, by means of that most pernicious of all implements, the plow."

Yann Martel and Brenda Baker played the roles of Wallace Stegner and Sophia Dixon, exchanging letters about the accuracy of a serialized book by Stegner set on the prairies. Rob MacDonald read from letters written by Ty Cobb to a young Saskatchewan baseball hopeful. And on a more sombre note, Brenda Baker read letters from the mothers of a Royal Canadian Air Force crew missing as of January 1944 but whose fate was not official until 1953.

For me, the most compelling part of the evening was watching how each reader approached their material. In several cases, they provided additional context from their own knowledge and experience. A highlight was Allan Blakeney singing a Presbyterian hymn to help explain a reading by U of S President Walter Murray, a fellow native of Nova Scotia. More generally, this kind of thing (well, not usually the singing) is quite typical of how archives can be used and interpreted – different people, in different times, will bring new approaches, and different interpretations. So it's vital that a broad range of archives be preserved and made accessible, to allow subsequent re-interpretations of historical events, and to allow use of the documentation in ways that may not have been envisioned originally.

The other main event in Saskatoon during Archives Week will be "A Night at the Roxy," at Saskatoon's beautifully refurbished Roxy Theatre. The evening will showcase a variety of short films. Most are archival holdings but one recent film, produced by the provincial archives council, will feature a poem preserved by the U of S Library's Special Collections written by Louis Riel for his jailer.

The U of S Archives' contribution is a silent film called "Roots in the Ground" about research done in the 1930s by T.K. Pavlychenko, that was so rigorous and unique that it's still being cited today. This film demonstrates the intriguing "soil-block washing method" designed to remove root systems without injuring them, based on the premise that root study is required to properly interpret above-ground development of plants. On the lighter side, an early public education film about cream grading features "Mr. Sweet Cream" and "Mr. Lumpy Sour." The History Department's Bill Waiser will be on hand to provide commentary.

I hope you will be able to join us for one or more events. Happy Archives Week to all!

Tim Hutchison is the University  of Saskatchewan Archivist.

Editor's Note: The 4th annual Archives Week in Saskatchewan takes place Feb. 2-8. The Spotlight on the Past: Archival Readings from Archives in Saskatchewan takes place Feb. 3 at 7:30 p.m. at the Frances Morrison Library. A Night at the Roxy will be Feb. 5 at 7:30 p.m. More information is available at http://scaa.sk.ca.