New perspectives!
To start with the most "moving" event of our year: in late
August 2018 the Archives relocated to Suite 211, 4810 Jean
Talon West, in Cote des Neiges, Montreal, on the corner of
Victoria avenue. We are now on the second floor of a large,
multi-functional commercial building with a view over low rooftops
towards the western skyline.
The advantages of the new facility include more accessibility
features, natural lighting and improved climate control. Two bus
lines pass nearby, and it is a short walk from two subway
stations. Measuring over 5000 square feet in size, our new
site includes a protected room for fragile materials, large tables
for researcher use, enough room for group meetings, a lounge nook,
and a handicapped washroom. Researchers and volunteers are pleased
that the document consultation area is enhanced by light from the
nearby windows, while our staff and volunteer assistants appreciate
how the strategically planned and simplified layout has rendered
the archival collections better protected yet easier to
retrieve.
This major change came after 40 years at the Samuel Bronfman
House, the former Canadian Jewish Congress headquarters building
which became part of Concordia University's downtown campus in
1999. After having received notice that the university wanted to
repurpose the space, we carried out a lengthy and exhaustive search
in order to find new premises which combined all the features
listed above along with affordable rent.
Renovating and setting up at our new space would not have been
possible without the generous financial support of the
Azrieli Foundation, the Alex Dworkin fund at the Jewish Community
Foundation, Jewish Federations Canada-UIA and
Federation CJA Montreal, the Labour Zionist Trust, and the
Bibliothèque et Archives Nationales du Quebec.
The move itself involved five long days of shelf construction
and pallets of boxes in transit, after weeks of intensive placement
planning. This was followed by many more weeks of re-inventorying,
on-site rearranging, and decorating. We are still not quite
finished with this work, but have been fully operational since
September. Photos taken at various stages of the process can be
seen on our Facebook page.
Throughout this immense undertaking we were fortunate to be
guided and helped by many volunteers on so many levels: notably
architectural consultants Gerald Soiferman and Jake
Fichten, real estate expert Harvey Elman,
archival studies students and other young assistants including
Melissa Castron, Coady Sidley, Larry Adebesin and Karl
Mangune, and our long-time stalwarts Shirley
Sibalis and Eunice Seligson.
Getting back into our regular roles of acquiring historical
materials and responding to researchers at the new site, we were
excited to add to our Montreal-oriented information with the
donation by Dr. Mel Himes of a shelf's worth of
documents about the city's Jewish-owned businesses and the vast
range of Jewish individuals who have made an impact here.
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We were also thrilled to acquire for our art collection (and new
wall space) four paintings from the estate of the artist
Moe Reinblatt, including this Midnight Landscape,
as well as a Moe Reinblatt print transferred to us from the McCord
Museum.
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Among the more public uses of our collections in 2018,
earlier this year we provided many of the images for the
widely-attended McCord Museum exhibit "Shalom
Montreal", and we are currently in the process of
assisting with illustrative materials for a QAHN
(Quebec Anglo Heritage Network) travelling educational exhibit
about Quebec history.
Among the individual researchers who consulted us recently, we
were particularly gratified to assist the great-grandson of
David
Rome, the founding historian of the Canadian Jewish
Archives. Canadian Jewish Congress collection photographs and an
audio interview done with Rome in the early 1990s helped
eleven-year-old Oren - who happens to be the age at which his
great-grandfather came to Canada in 1921 - to speak about the role
David Rome played in the story of the refugees who arrived on the
Serpa Pinto ship in 1944. (Eleven year old David Rome can be seen
at bottom left of the image at right.)