Archival Narratives for Canada

Re-Telling Stories in a Changing Landscape

Edited by Kathleen Garay, Christl Verduyn

Every nation has stories that help to define the country and its people. Focusing on widely varied written sources, Archival Narratives for Canada is an examination of the stories that have defined Canada. Professional archivists, scholars and other researchers working with archives — from the local and regional to national and international — explore the changing landscape of archival resources in Canada and in particular the role of archives in shaping the country’s narratives. They examine, among other topics, the politics of archiving, the process of archival documentation, the particular challenges of small and regional collections, the role of new technologies and digitization, and new conceptualizations of the archive. This collection also includes a variety of case studies which demonstrate the value of archival research, both traditional and assisted by digital resources and search engines, in reconstructing Canadian texts and authors from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Contents

• Introduction (Kathleen Garay & Christl Verduyn)
• Part 1 – Mapping the Archival Landscape (Doug Rimmer, Noah Richler)
• Part 2 – Archives and Narratives for Canada: International, National and Regional (Andrew Nurse, Kristan Cook, Heather Dean, Manon Brunet, Ronald Labelle, Grant Hurley)
• Part 3 – Re-producing, Re-presenting the Archival Narrative: Mapping the Virtual World (Robert Summerby-Murray, Ala Rekrut, Melissa McCarthy, Dean Irvine & Meagan Timney, Emily Ballantyne & Zailig Pollock)
• Part 4 – Case Studies in Archives and the Canadian Narrative (Jocelyn Hallman, Jodi Aoki, Gwendolyn Davies & Carole Gerson, Michael Peterman, Gregory Klages)
 

About the Authors

Kathleen Garay teaches in the Arts and Science Program and is an adjunct member of the Department of History at McMaster University.

Christl Verduyn is professor of English and Davidson Chair and director of the Centre for Canadian Studies at Mount Allison University.