OurDigitalWorld Newsletter March 2023

Challenge Accepted: Data Mining with Digitized Newspapers

Text Data Mining is an exciting new direction for newspaper digitization projects, leveraging the most recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning with what is frequently the most extensive record of a community’s past, the local newspaper.

Exploring Multicultural History

Recent work by Guanqiao (Tony) Fu, a 4th year student in the History program at University of Toronto Mississauga, has resulted in three exhibit projects focusing on the Portuguese Canadian Diaspora, Chinese Migrants in Canada, and Ontario’s Experiences of Wars and Conflicts for the past 100 years.

Ontario Legislature Scrapbook Hansard Indexing Project

The earliest Hansard records were made by Journalists and published in Canada’s early national newspapers. These were clipped into a scrapbook and stored at the Ontario Legislative Library. The microfilmed books were scanned in 2019 and uploaded using the VITA Toolkit for public access. Almost 4000 index records have been uploaded so far, with particular attention to capturing personal names and subject headings that detail the Parliamentary session discussions and Acts.

Holodomor Survivor Videos

Working together, the Holodomor Research Educaton Centre (HREC) and Ukrainian Canadian Research & Documentation Centre (UCRDC) have shared the first batch of a large collection of Holodomor Survivor interviews.

The OurOntario.ca search site has a fresh new look!

Our favourite discovery site is now even easier to browse, with updated media type and contributor links, cleaner look and feel, on/off facets for results sets, and more.

Community newsletter highlights pioneer diaries

The South Marysburgh Mirror is a community newsletter from Prince Edward County, Ontario. Highlights include the transcription of Nelson Hicks’ Diaries from the turn of the 20th century.

Uncovering the Collections

Discover the vast number of resources in the VITA Toolkit collections including: Soldiers & Veterans, Built Heritage, Church Records & Vital Statistics, City & Telephone Directories.

Read the full newsletter and explore the linked collections.

Celebrating Black History Month – every month

This month we’re highlighting collections that take a deep dive into the Black experience. For Black History Month on social media, we’ve showcased some significant resources in the VITA collections for understanding and exploring Black history in Ontario and beyond.

As always, we recommend reviewing and searching the Abolitionist Newspaper collections. Past blog posts have featured these papers in articles like Fugitive Voices: Black-run periodicals in Abolition-era Canada and news about the re-scanning of the Voice of the Fugitive newspaper in Announcing the Abolitionists Collection.

South Western Ontario was a major crossing point for fugitive slaves and freemen coming from the United States. To learn more about this aspect of Chatham Kent and area, check out the wonderful exhibit “Let us march on until Victory is won,” from Chatham Kent Museum https://vitacollections.ca/ckmuseums/620/exhibit.

Exhibit illustrated with original artwork by Mariah Alexander

Family history collections often end up at local archives and public libraries, one is the Richard Bell Family Fonds at Brock University includes 85 photographs, tintypes and documents spanning c.1850 to 1950. The extended family lived in London and St. Catharines and the collection includes birth, death and marriage certificates, images from family bibles, snapshots from family day trips, and more. https://images.ourontario.ca/Brock/2817492/gallery

Community collections often highlight significant citizens. We want to broadcast some of the stories we’ve found from our VITA client collections. For example: Bob Turner, previously a catcher for the Chicago White Sox, Turner became Colborne’s first Recreational Director https://vitacollections.ca/cramahelibrary/355/exhibit.

Bob Turner, Colborn e Recreational Director

Halton Region boasts the remarkable Veteran Henry Thomas Shepherd, who fought in both World Wars and whose story is shared in a virtual exhibit created by Halton Hills Public Library https://vitacollections.ca/HaltonHillsImages/558/exhibit.

And read on about Dr. Saint-Firmin Monestime. Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Dr. Monestime moved from Haiti to open a practice in Timmins, but a chance encounter in a restaurant convinced him to put down roots in Mattawa instead, a Northern Ontario town where he would later became the first Black mayor in Canada: https://vitacollections.ca/multiculturalontario/476/exhibit/17.

Black History in Canada includes advocacy and civil action for human rights here and around the world. The Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean (CERLAC) houses resources for researchers and scholars and features a fascinating Black Voices collection on their site https://vitacollections.ca/cerlacresourcecentre/search.

Researchers of all kinds use the collections to find history and illustrations for material of all kinds. Recently, a researcher contacted us with thanks for the transcripts of Schooner Days for background material about Caymanian Captain Culrose McLaughlin (1896-1992) and two-time Canada’s Cup winner Commodore Aemilius Jarvis (1860-1940) for her article Black Yachting History.

We’re privileged to be able to promote and share these collections online, resources that can help us celebrate Black History every month. If you have a story or collection you want highlighted, contact us at info@ourdigitalworld.org.

Banner image “Henry and Susanna Maude Shepherd Family” courtesy of Halton Hills Public Library.

Building Multicultural History Timelines With VITA

Guest blog post from Victoria Scioli, placement student from University of Toronto Mississauga History Program

Over the past semester, I had the opportunity to work on the multicultural timelines with OurDigitalWorld. I became acquainted with the OurOntario.ca database and used the VITA Toolkit to implement the work. I really enjoyed having access to so much primary source material and learning how to search for appropriate sources to create the timelines.

Being a history student, much of my time is spent looking at primary sources to use in research papers, but I had never used them in a creative format like a timeline before. I spent a lot of time looking at the primary sources related to the histories of Japanese-Canadians, the Black community, and women in Ontario and trying to come up with a storyline that would best present significant information to the reader. I learned how to keep my descriptions concise and pick primary sources that could best provide insight into these different aspects of Ontario’s history.

When I was younger, I remember learning about the Japanese Internment but never any details about what the camps looked like nor images and testimonies of men and women who suffered the effects of this kind of discrimination. While working on my timeline, I was able to look at primary sources that pictured what the conditions were like for men at Internment camps like the one in Schreiber, Ontario. I also learned about significant survivors like author Yon Shimizu and Japanese Canadian politician Bev Oda. Both of these people contributed to creating awareness of the ways Japanese Canadians were discriminated against during the war and how that generation were forced to restart their lives in Canada. I learned a great deal from the research that went into these timelines, I hope that it inspires viewers to learn more on each of the subjects.

One issue I ran into with the timeline feature was finding a proper way to begin and end my timeline that would provide the reader with context to the history before jumping into the actual items being featured. This was resolved by adding umbrella panels for my start and end dates. These allowed me to provide a short “Introduction” and “Conclusion” for the timeline. They introduce the viewer to any important information or advisory before getting into the timeline content and provide a short summary.

It was such a pleasure to work on such an interesting project! I found that the timelines are a great way to engage with primary source materials from different institutions in order to illustrate and explore significant events in Ontario’s history.

Explore the timelines:

Japanese Internment in Ontario and its Impact

The Progression of Settler Women’s Roles in Ontario From 1800s to 1960s

A Timeline of Black History and Significant Figures in Ontario