St. Albert historians can time-travel to the past this week through a digital archive of photos collected by the daughter of a former mayor.
The Musée Héritage Museum is celebrating International Archives Week this June 9-13.
Archives Week is a time when museums and historians celebrate the importance of archives, said Musée archivist Vino Vipulanantharajah. The theme of this year’s week is digitization, and the museum is marking it by putting the newly scanned Evelyn Perron photo collection online.
The museum will also host a free talk on preserving family photos on June 13 as part of Archives Week.
Preserving the past
The museum has piles of photos and documents dating back to the 1820s, many of which are extremely fragile, Vipulanantharajah said. Prior to scanners and the Internet, the only way to examine these items was to do so in person at the museum. Scanning these items lets more people access them while simultaneously preserving the originals, which historians may want to keep for legal, research, or sentimental reasons.
“There’s an aesthetic component to originals you can never get from a duplication,” he said.
One of the big challenges archivists face is identifying the significance of the material they have, as they often don’t have the context behind them, Vipulanantharajah said. They might have to match photos to long-gone locations, for example, or set scrambled collections in order based on subtle clues. Guests can try out these and other challenges at the museum’s Archives Challenge table during Archives Week.
You also have to decide what to actually keep, he said. Whether it’s a bookshelf or a file server, you often don’t have space for it all.
Storage formats also matter, Vipulanantharajah said. Historians will use acid-free substances such as Mylar to store documents to prevent degradation, and keep them in dark places at fixed temperatures and humidity. They also have to pick file formats carefully to ensure digitized documents stay accessible.
Perron’s picts
The Perron collection is about 200 photos assembled by Evelyn Perron, who lived in St. Albert for most of the 1900s, Vipulanantharajah said. The daughter of Michael Hogan (St. Albert’s mayor from 1919-43) and wife of Eugene Perron (son of businessman and onetime St. Albert mayor Fleuri Perron), she worked in the town office during the Depression era and once lived above the Banque d’Hochelaga (now the Art Gallery of St. Albert).
Vipulanantharajah said archives such as the Perron collection give us insight into how St. Albert has changed over time. Perron’s photos depict family gatherings, Second World War military uniforms, and the many hockey teams Eugene Perron played on in the 1930s, for example, and could give valuable insights to fashion buffs. You can also find images of the old Brick School, the Bruin Inn, and the levelling out of Seven Hills.
In an email, Vipulanantharajah said it’s fun to investigate archival materials, as you often have to find clues in them to determine their missing context.
“I’m personally intrigued by my job because it’s my way of time-travelling,” he said.
“Getting to see old images in particular is a way to [travel to] the past and the closest I’ll ever get to being there.”
The Archives Week talk is June 13 at 2 p.m. Visit artsandheritage.ca for details.
