2015 was a busy year of activities worthy of the name of Archives
- and a year which ends with the Archives ready to assume a new
name.
Several important and interesting collections were added to our
holdings over the course of 2015. Two major acquisitions were from
national women's organizations; one a new
collection, from Na'amat Canada, and the other a
significant addition to the collection of the National
Council of Jewish Women. With the assistance of our
Archives Advisory Committee member Dr. Pierre Anctil, we also
obtained and two major family collections, that of Rabbi
David Feuerwerker of Montreal, and that of the
Pollack family of Quebec City.
Significant steps were made in the arrangement and cataloguing
of both large and small collections this year, with the help of
five student interns hailing from archives studies and document
management programs at McGill University, UQAM
(Université de Québec à Montréal) and John Abbott
College. We also have the good fortune to continue to
benefit from the help of our loyal trio of volunteers.
Meanwhile, following the formal cessation of operations of
Canadian Jewish Congress and its charitable trust in late November
2015, beginning in January 2016 our repository's name will become
"Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives", replacing
the appellation "Canadian Jewish Congress Charities Committee
National Archives" which had been in use since 2005. This name
reflects both our national mandate, and our gratitude to the Alex Dworkin Foundation for Jewish Archives of
the Jewish Community Foundation of Montreal, which
provides our greatest source of support.
Along with our more fitting name, the Alex Dworkin Canadian
Jewish Archives will streamline its operating procedures by
becoming a national program operating directly under the auspices
of Jewish Federations of
Canada-UIA.
However, researchers and donors need not worry about where to
find us and the historical materials we care for; we continue to be
located in Montreal on the downtown campus of
Concordia University, in the former national headquarters building
of the Canadian Jewish Congress.
As the Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives we
will continue to fulfill the aims of the Resolution "On Canadian
Jewish Archives", that was set out at the CJC Plenary Assembly of
1934: "... That it is for the general interest and well-being
of Canadian Jewry that this historical material be preserved (...)
collected and stored (...) so that it may be made easily accessible
(...) for the purpose of study and reference."
