Summing up the year
A major theme this year, as in the previous one, has been
"student assistants". We are proud to have been chosen again as a
practicum site for both McGill University and
John Abbott College's archival studies programs,
and to have also benefited from a Canadian Heritage grant under the
program Young Canada Works in Heritage
Institutions. Our student assistants from McGill,
Casey Lees and Steven Daley, both
worked on our CJC and JIAS records backlog, while Daniel
Lavigne of JAC was responsible for putting online our
fascinating new WWII collection of Joe Jacobson
letters and diaries (http://www.cjhn.ca/permalink/200).
In addition,
the students helped to create Youtube clips showcasing some of our
audio interviews done by Leslie Lutsky and
Eiran Harris. For example, see Rabbi
Martin Penn speaking about his 1979 trip to the Soviet
Union at http://www.cjhn.ca/permalink/50249,
Ruth Colton Lehman speaking about the Ste. Sophie
Jewish Community at http://www.cjhn.ca/permalink/48400,
Dr. Joseph Leavitt speaking about bringing Polish
orphans to Canada in 1921 at http://www.cjhn.ca/permalink/50072, and an
excerpt from labour activist Lea Roback's
autobiography at http://www.cjhn.ca/permalink/50059. Meanwhile
Keltie MacPhail, our Young Canada Works student,
digitized many documents from CJC's Chronological and Community
files, which can now be seen here: A sampling of documents from Jewish communities
across Canada and Glimpses into the Canadian Jewish Congress
Chronological Files.
We continue to be assisted by our wonderful team of
long-time volunteers; Willie Glaser, Shirley
Sibalis and Eunice Seligson. In addition,
Keltie returned to us as a volunteer after her YCW
job ended, and McGill Library Studies graduate Amara
Schaffer helped out with a variety of tasks towards the
close of the year. Our seasoned volunteers work with us to improve
the cataloguing and condition of our older holdings and sometimes
tackle our new collections as well. For example, over the past
months Eunice has been working on the Zionist
organization records we recently received from the Bloomfield
family, which highlight the many contributions of Bernard
and Neri Bloomfield and their daughter Evelyn
Bloomfield Schachter to the development of Israel.
The majority of our efforts continue to be sustained by the
generosity of the Alex Dworkin Foundation for Jewish Archives,
through Federation CJA, and by our Partnership status with the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.
However the work we do to make collections available for research
is also facilitated by the financial contributions we receive from
individuals in appreciation of the information they have gleaned
through using archival resources. This year we gratefully
acknowledge contributions from Shepsel Shell and
Beatrice Freder.
Last May we participated in the first Jewish Montreal
Heritage Week, along with several partner organizations.
The results of this collaborative effort can still be viewed at http://www.jewishmontrealheritageweek.org/. In
the context of this week's events we produced a bilingual video
showcasing one of our oldest groups of documents. This film,
featuring the "Blue Book" newsletter of the Joseph
family, can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO0iLl_OJOI in
English and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B81jv5c-s98 in
French.
Our
other Outreach activities over the past year included serving as
hosts for the 100th anniversary commemoration of the
Aberdeen Student strike of 1913. We were also
proud to be present at the unveiling of an enhanced
memorial monument at Montreal's Baron de
Hirsch cemetery, which now lists the names of all the
Canadian Jewish servicemen who were killed while serving their
country. Project organizer Larry Rosenthal
provided these names to the cemetery using the Canadian Jewish
Casualties in the Canadian Armed Forces database
maintained at the CJCCC Archives by Assistant Archivist
Hélène Vallée.
In June, Archives Director Janice Rosen chaired
an Association of Canadian Archivists annual conference panel
session about Jewish cultural archives in Canada. She also
coordinated a special section of the Association of Canadian Jewish
Studies' journal Canadian Jewish Studies, called "The
Archives Matter". The 2012 issue of the Journal which features this
new section will be available in January 2014.