In less than a week, travel to the university will reach rocket speeds with the opening of two subway stations on campus.
While the commute nowadays may be described as rough, try and think back to the opening of Keele Campus in 1965 when the Bloor-Danforth line was still under construction. In fact, back then, the [...]
Archival Appraisal: Partnering with the Community
Two new partnerships aim to capture, preserve, and disseminate the histories of visible minorities, Indigenous peoples, and Toronto's immigrant construction workers: Home Made Visible (the Regent Park Festival) and the City Builders: An Oral History of Immigrant Construction Workers in Postwar Toronto (Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies).
In these projects, the communities self-select records to represent their histories and CTASC [...]
New project looks at the builders behind the buildings
Originally published in yFile: York University’s News.
The Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies recently launched "City Builders: An Oral History of Immigrant Construction Workers in Postwar Toronto," a public history and research project, with funding from the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) Local 183, the largest construction union in North America.
Construction of the Ross [...]
Our Top 5 Responses from #AskAnArchivist Day
Ranging from silly in nature to serious, hundreds of questions descended upon archival professionals during #AskAnArchivist Day on 4 October 2017. By participating through Twitter, our responses went beyond campus boundaries to engage with fellow archivists and the broader community.
These five tweets were our favourites that helped reach an audience fourteen times the size of [...]
World Ballet Day : Behind-the-scenes photographs of the National Ballet of Canada
Lawson documented 25 years of CBC production
With World Ballet Day falling on a Thursday, it’s the perfect opportunity to highlight “Throwback Thursday” photographs of the National Ballet of Canada. The fonds of Robert Lawson, a Canadian Broadcasting Company production designer in the 1950s and 1960s, is an invaluable collection of over 11,000 photographs documenting the early days [...]
Celebrating Jean Augustine, Education, Community & Diaspora
On Sunday, 9 September 2017, Hundreds of guests came to celebrate Augustine's eight decades of accomplishments (many of which are recorded in her fonds!). During her birthday speech, Jean Augustine shared her pride in preserving her records at York University Libraries.
What an entrance for Dr. Jean Augustine as our community celebrates this amazing woman #onpoli [...]

