Queen's University Archives Annual Lecture

OPENING 

I was pleased to attend the annual Queen's University Archives lecture, along with other local notables such as Andrew Chisholm, Bill Fitsell, Stuart Crawford and Jennifer McKendry, held in the Alan Green Fireplace Reading Room of Queen's Stauffer Library. (Housed in the round, vaulted rotunda and terrace on the second floor, we were kitty-corner to the Douglas Library, a place where my Dad and I photocopied many documents that he attempted to preserve in his own archival system.) The presentation began with an introduction by Queen's University Archivist Ken Hernden, who noted that the first archival material was donated to the university in 1869, and that Queen's now has 10 linear kilometres of textual records alone, as the primary archival repository for south-east Ontario. The purpose of this annual lecture is to disseminate research carried out using the archives. [In this post, I've summarized some of the presentation using personal notes.] The Archivist introduced lecturer Dr. Laura Murray, creator of the SWIHHP, who received her B.A. from Queen's and her M.A. and Ph.D from Columbia University. She dedicated the lecture to her late colleague Andra McCartney.

BEGINNINGS OF THE SWIHHP

The Swamp Ward & Inner Harbour History Project (SWIHHP, pronounced 'sweep') began in 2015 as a means to learn more about Kingston and provide an alternative emphasis on Kingston's usual monolithic branding of wealthy elites, limestone(!), without much discussion of the human stories, other races, women and 20th century history. The SWIHHP would extend the normal pedagogical experience beyond the university, using oral history, cohering individual stories into a complete history. Students were trained in public history, and public walking tours and 56 blog posts have been created. Nearly 80 people were interviewed, providing text summaries that will be time-stamped records that will be housed in the Archives and searchable. Several short sample interview audio clips were played.

IS THE SWIHHP OVER? 

Dr. Murray is ready for the SWIHHP to be let loose into the archives. Opportunities still exist for colleagues from different disciplines to augment and enrich the products of the project, exploiting some blind spots like race and ethnic origins.

NOSTALGIA?

Nostalgia was once viewed as a sickness, though is now much more marketable! Nostalgia can be viewed with suspicion as it obscures how things happened in the past, introducing sentiment. An example: the Swamp Ward is viewed as 'candy' for real-estate agent(s), including language highlighted in a recent sample real estate listing from the Ward. Though much of the Swamp Ward's housing was from the 19th centry, it has been marked by the 20th century. Nostalgia can be borrowed nostalgia, appropriated nostalgia and even affects gentrification. 

Nostalgia figured in many of the SWIHHP interview themes: relationships between generations, class loyalty, hard work, dynamics of power, socio-economic self-sufficiency, and simply being known. Positive elements were highlighted, and nostalgia was sometimes the historical evidence in itself. Facts in focus can be hard, compared to nostalgia which may be blurrily soft. Nostalgia can be of the restorative or reflective types, the latter type longing for something that can never be...again. 

Nostalgia nurtures relationships with people, building bridges between past and present, and is more about listening than asking. Interviewers were urged to keep looking interested rather than interrupting their subjects. Oral history positions a person in time, among his or her social and economic standing. It is not packaging a story, the narrator need not be seen as a protagonist, and unlike storytelling in a podcast format which can emotionally tinge a story, there is no producer or time limit. Paths or openings into other lives and conditions are provided, and a space is left to explore further. Each interview is an archive, not a story - about the past, but in the present.

COMPARISON TO ARCHIVES

Archives are historical documents: a record, place or concept, a theoretical view and a system of knowledge. Necessarily, connections are controlled by an institution, to protect the archives. But what is missing?

COUNTERARCHIVE?

A counterarchive is a different place, in which a different standard of importance challenges the primacy of the goal of preservation. What did subjects bring forward - items they had kept - to someone from outside their community? Archives do not hold adequate images or words by ordinary people, which can sometimes only be gleaned by going to places. Placing plaques in the ground does not promote questioning nor collective conversation. A counterarchive is very much the fleeting, temporary, transitional nature of conversations. Those using Queen's Archives are not necessarily from the university commuinity. A challenge: invitations should be issued to potential users, and strict admission requirements like library cards should not be a prerequisite. [Hey, it's free!]

CLOSING THOUGHTS

This lecture provided much food for thought and was warmly received by the large audience in attendance. A youtube video of the lecture is available here. As I'm sure the delicious-looking refreshments brought in during the question period were. But I had a bus to catch!

Though much has been written about Kingston's old stones, both human and built, there has little material readily available on houses north of Princess Street or detailed operations of Swamp Ward industries. I have explored both these for my Hanley Spur layout. I had to traverse Googlemaps to find the 'typical' Swamp Ward house. As a relative outsider, I must say my archives experience so far has been positive. I continue to find much of the mortar material which holds those old stones together. And that is thanks to the Queen's University Archives.

As it pertains to modelling the Hanley Spur in HO scale, my layout is perhaps more nostalgia than counterarchive. I'd like to think it is a fairly accurate three-dimensional scale snapshot of the operations that occurred in that modelled year in the Swamp Ward and just beyond. To me, it is a creative and non-static form of active remembrance. Modellers often model what we railfanned (or wish we had) and I'm slowly building an archive of photos and information to support my modelling efforts.