Legacy preserved: Brandon Sun archives find sanctuary in Winnipeg

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This article was published 13/04/2024 (544 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

More than a century’s worth of the Brandon Sun’s archives have found a new permanent home in Winnipeg.

When the Sun sold its old building at 501 Rosser Ave., last year, its new home at the Town Centre Mall did not have room for archival copies of the paper’s issues dating back to the late 1800s.

The Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum, with help from representatives of the Brandon General Museum & Archives, and various volunteers had the archives moved into a room of its historic Second World War-era hangar as a temporary measure to save them from being thrown in a landfill.

In the last week of March, the Manitoba Legislative Library arranged for a moving team to pick up the archives and bring them to Winnipeg, where they will be catalogued and preserved.

“Part of our mandate at the legislative library is to preserve the publishing history of Manitoba,” said Stuart Hay, head of library reference services.

“We’ve been longtime newspaper collectors. We’ve got, I think, over 800 different newspaper titles in our collection. But for some reason, we have a big gap of Brandon Sun (issues) and it’s a mystery.”

Taking in the Sun archives fills a gap in the library’s collection. While the library has a microfilm collection for the Sun, Hay said researchers looking for good quality images from old issues often get better results by looking at the original print copies.

Currently, staff are sorting the volumes to prepare them for cataloguing.

“We’d like to wrap them up in heavy brown kraft paper,” Hay said. “And then they’ll get put on the shelves in the stacks. And as long as they’re kept out of the light and they don’t experience any big swings in temperature or humidity, they’ll be just fine for decades and decades.”

Some of the material is in better shape than other. However, Hay said it’s not just a matter of age. It depends on the quality of paper issues were printed on as well as how they were handled.

For the archives in better condition, library patrons will eventually be able to handle them directly. Items in worse condition will still be accessible, but museum staff will handle them for patrons. Some are so fragile they might not be allowed to be taken out at all.

Beyond Manitoba newspapers, the library also has publications from trade and university presses, local histories and other materials published both in Manitoba and about Manitoba.

The Free Press has digital archives that can be accessed at archives.winnipegfreepress.com. There are physical archives housed at the Archives of Manitoba and the University of Manitoba.

Hay didn’t know when exactly the Brandon archives would officially make their way into the stacks, but figured it would be sometime this year.

Stephen Hayter, the Commonwealth air museum’s executive director, said the Sun archives’ stay in their hangar was largely uneventful except for a couple of visits for research purposes.

Heritage Minister Glen Simard, NDP MLA for Brandon East, told the Sun he helped arrange funding for the library to take in the archives.

“We wanted to make sure that, having lost the ability to store them … that they would continue to be housed responsibly,” Simard said.

Brandon Sun managing editor Matt Goerzen said he was thrilled the archives have found a permanent home.

“For more than 142 years the Brandon Sun has been instrumental in telling the stories of Brandon, western Manitoba and the province as a whole, and as a company we are proud of that legacy,” he said.

— Brandon Sun