Fall term in the Archives means class visits.  When we renovated our space several years ago, we planned the public area with these visits in mind, and they are among our favourite activities.  This fall we’ve welcome Prof. Cindy Ewing’s graduate students and Prof. Emily Gilbert’s TRN 140 students.  The TrinOne students will arrive next week for pizza lunch and an introduction to the archives, and Prof. Tim Sayle will bring two classes later this term. During these classes we attempt to de-mystify the use of archives for research and make students comfortable with some new concepts that will help them use primary documents for their assignments. 

A highlight this fall was the visit of a group of students from the History Students Association. We brought out a wide range of items, from World War I trench maps (Allan Ashley fonds), to original drawings for the Strachan Hall windows (Ellen Simon fonds), to letters that document the placement of Home Children in western Ontario (Graham Patterson fonds).  We included Michael Shenstone’s papers relating to the Tehran hostage incident, John Strachan’s memoir of his journey from Scotland to Canada in 1799, John Corbett’s diaries from 1913-16, and Blair Seaborn’s account of his clandestine travels to North Vietnam in the 1970s.  The students always enjoy the  physical connection with documents and photographs and we enjoy sharing our enthusiasm for the collections.