HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1989-01-18, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18, 1989. PAGE 5.
History on file
New archives a treasure house
of historical information
BY KEITH ROULSTON
It’s a daunting sight for anyone
who dreads paperwork and thinks
history is dry: a large room filled
with shelf after shelf of books and
boxed files of old paper. But for
people looking to recapture the
history of their family or their
community the new archives room
at the Huron County Pioneer
Museum is a treasure house of
historical gems.
The unsung part of the new
museum building completed last
year, is the archives room wljich,
for the first time, gives the docu
ments of the history of the county a
proper home.
The archival collection of the
county began with the work of a
handful of dedicated volunteers
from the Huron County Historical
Society in 1964. People like Ethel
Poth of Bayfield, Mrs. Muriel Mack
(formerly of Crediton), Mrs. Tait
Clark of Colborne Township, Irene
Clark, formerly of Auburn and
Mrs. Robert Simpson of Hensall
spent many hours accumulating
material ranging from locally pub
lished books to old school registers.
The archives collection first
found a home in the old museum
building, then a more secure space
in the basement of the Huron
County Library Building. But there
was never enough room and the
temperature and humidity controls
were never the best for the long
term storage of paper and with
volunteers doing all the work, it
was hard for people to do the
research they wanted at convenient
times. So when the new museum
was being planned and a proposal
was made to include an archives
room, the Historical Society agreed
to turn over its archives to the
museum.
Those who used the cramped
quarters of past archives will be
amazed at the new facility which is
just now taking shape. There is a
large reading room where research
can be done with a view through a
large window out to the front
courtyard of the museum. In the
stacks room, the room that, for
security reasons, only staff will see,
huge rolling shelves (purchased
with a $30,000 grant from the
Historical Society) help increase
the normal capacity of the room
many times over. The room is
already larger than could be ima
gined when the archives was
cramped into one small room in the
old museum.
While the basis of the archival
collection remains the material
turned over by the Historical
Society, the new archives is much
larger than the original collection,
says Claus Breede, project director
for the museum. Now that the
county has a first class home for
paper records, records kept else
where in the province are finding
their way back to Huron. The
University of Western Ontario
(UWO) has returned about 150
cubic feet of material about the
history of the county that was once
kept in the regional archives at the
university. The Ontario Archives is
expected to return another 5 to 100
cubic feet of old school records.
It’s part of a program of decen
tralization, Mr. Breede explains.
At one time the idea was to gather
all the archival information in one
central archives in Toronto but now
that there are various museums
and archives around the province
capable of keeping records safe,
the records are being repatriated to
the regions they first came from.
Last week staff was busy at the
archives putting in 780 volumes of
old registry books containing early
land registry information on
shelves that line one wall of the
large room and reach almost to the
ceiling. The books fit on the shelves
as if the shelves were made for
them, which they were. The
shelves are in the museum as the
result of almost pack-rat tendencies
of museum founder J. H. Neill. The
shelves were originally constructed
to hold these books at the Goderich
Registry Office but when the
registry books were taken to Toron
to several years back, Mr. Neill
salvaged the shelving thinking it
might be useful at the museum.
Today the shelving is now back
serving its original purpose since
the books have been returned to
the county.
So what happens if you want to
research the history of your family
or your community. How do you
possibly find your way through the
tons of paper in the archives?
Well, Mr. Breede explains, the
first thing you do is contact the
museum and staff can talk to you
about the project and how to go
about it. The staff can highlight
parts of the archival collection that
might help. The staff doesn’t have
the time, however, to do the
research for you. The museum gets
many letters from people wanting
information for family trees but
can’t do the work, he says. Some
time in the future it is hoped there
might be volunteer staff that might
take on part of this job.
Those coming to the museum to
do research regularly will get a
research pass. They will sign in at
the front desk in the lobby, be
given a number and be taken to the
research room. The reason for the
paper work, Mr. Breede says, is for
security purposes. People have
been known to take valuable docu
ments home or even cut pictures
out of books so as much control is
put on who uses the archives as
possible.
The research room will eventu
ally have a computer system in it
which will have an index of all the
data bases, with a different data
base for each of the different
collections: municipal records,
school records, etc. The researcher
will be given a crash course in how
to use the computer to find the
information needed.
Trying to simplify the finding of
information in the tons of paper has
been one of the tasks that has kept
the museum busy. Staff has spent
about 15 man-years on sorting the
archives to see for sure what is
there and in finding ways to make
the collection easily useable by the
public and the job isn’t halfway
done yet, he says. Most of the
original Historical Society collec
tion is now on computer and the
materials returned by UWO came
with a system but it was a system
for a very big collection and the
staff is trying to simplify it.
Eventually Mr. Breede hopes that
the computer system will not only
identify what is in each file box in
the entire collection, but gives a
few notes on what the material is
about. (The museum is also looking
for volunteers to help out with this
task).
The computer will identify the
box containihg the relevant infor
mation for the researcher and he or
she will then ask the staff to bring
that box number. The staff member
will go into the stacks room and
retrieve the box and bring it to the
research room where the research
er can find the information he or
she needs.
For those looking for more
general information on Huron
County, the museum has a large
Claus Breede, Project Director for the Huron County Pioneer Museum shows
some of the hundreds of file boxes stored in the archives room of the
Museum. The records provide the information needed for researchers into
family or community histories.
reading library that contains most
of the community histories of the
area as well as historical atlases
and other historical books.
While the collection has grown
by leeps and bounds since the
original Historical Society archives
was acquired (there are now three
pieces of the archival collection -
ranging from a single paper to an
entire book - for each object in the
museum’s artifact collection in the
rest of the building) Mr. Breede is
looking for more. The archives is
always looking for private papers
including old family diaries, he
says. He’d like to have a copy of
each family history written about a
family in the township. The ar
chives would welcome the business
records of significant businesses
that are disappearing.
Photographs are another item
the archives would like to have,
particularly where they involve
events or things. Pictures of un
identified people aren’t so worth
while unless they illustrate some
thing of the lifestyle of the era, he
says. Where possible everyone in
the photograph should be identi
fied. The archives is particularly
interested in any photo of build
ings, events or ships or photos that
illustrate the lifestyle of people in
the county.
The one caution Mr. Breede
gives is that he hopes people won’t
be angry if staff decide the contri
bution they want to give wouldn’t
be relative to the archival collec
tion. On the other hand, he says,
things some people think are junk,
might be treasures to the musuem
staff.
Many people would think the
whole room full of old papers and
books is “junk” but for those
seeking to get in touch with the
past, the new archives provides an
invaluable research tool. Those
papers hold untold secrets of the
histories of families and communi
ties.
Ouch! Those
lost tourist
dollars hurt.
BY RAYMOND CANON
Anybody who found themselves
sitting in one of my economics
classes would soon find out about
something called the multiplier.
Without going into all the theory
involved in explaining just how this
mechanism works, let me say that
it demonstrates the result of inject
ing extra money into the economy
of Canada.
Thus, if tourists from other
countries arrive on our shores and
spend a grand total of one billion
dollars, it will result in consider
The International
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ably more than one billion dollars
in goods and services being sold
since money, unlike gas, electricity
and the like, has the ability of being
spent over and over again in the
economy, something that is called
the velocity of money.
At any rate the very presence of
the multiplier together with the
foreign tourists, causes a great deal
of spending in Canada and hence
the creation of a great many jobs. It
should be realized that tourism is
what is called a labour-intensive
industry, that is, more jobs get
created per million dollars of
spending than, say, the automobile
industry. With that in mind, we
should be doing everything poss
ible to attract more tourists here if
we are really intent on keeping the
rate of unemployment as low as
possible. In reality, what is done is
for the most part just a drop in the
proverbial bucket.
Now comes the really bad news.
The unfortunate part of it all is that
multiplier works just as efficiently
in reverse as it does forward. That
is, when Canadians go out of
Canada on a holiday and spent
their money elsewhere, their
spending is great for the area in
which they are enjoying their
holiday. However every billion
dollars that is spent by Canadian
tourists abroad, the negative multi
plier means that far more than a
billion dollars is lost to the Cana
dian economy and hence the loss of
a considerable number of jobs.
The more astute of my readers
will have right now latched on to
the fact that the spending which
Canadian tourists do out of the
country could well be less than the
spending that foreign tourists do
here; it could even be more. The
sad fact is that we do much more
spending out of Canada than
foreign tourists do here, about two
billion dollars more in fact, and this
all adds up to the loss of a
considerable amount of jobs as I
indicated above.
This should not be taken to mean
that I am firmly wedded to the fact
that all Canadians should stay at
home, come hell or high water. I
can understand that many senior
citizens, to cite one example, like to
get away from the harsh winter and
so go off to Florida or some other
warm climate. I doubt very much, if
this article were to be read and
discussed all over Canada, there
would be any great rush to stay at
home and see something of Canada
instead. By and large Canadians
consider it a right, not a privilege,
to be able to go to any country they
please and spend as much as they
want without worrying about what
is happening to the country.
The cost is not, it should be
realized, limited to the number of
jobs lost. Since Canada has a deficit
in its Current Account, which takes
in such things as trade and
tourism, the deficit has to be
financed by borrowing and borrow
ing means interest payments. This
all adds up to the fact that we have
to forego a higher standard of
living and I am sure that only a few
concerned economists such as my
self have ever considered this
point.
Since Canadians are so reluctant
to stay at home, the answer to the
above problem is not to try to keep
them here but to persuade, induce,
or what have you, more foreign
tourists to come here and spend
more. What is more important, we
have to make them want to come
back, bring their friends and
relatives and stay even longer.
There are several ways you can
go about doing just that. For
openers, be friendly and helpful to
any tourist you meet, regardless of
his or her country of origin. Try to
make them feel at home. If you are
working in a store, go the second
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