Bring city history out of exile

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/01/2019 (2620 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Everyone who has a loved one with progressive dementia gains a renewed appreciation of the importance of memory.

Memories are a record of who we are, where we have been and what we have accomplished. When those memories slip away, so does much of our identity.

It’s like that with a city, too. Winnipeg’s identity is partly shaped by its collective memory, which relies substantially on the city archives that in recent years have suffered civic neglect. Encouragingly, a financial offer from the Winnipeg Foundation last Tuesday could change that.

Winnipeg has a first-rate archive collection, but it’s been shunted into shamefully inadequate quarters.

The archives were in the former Carnegie Library at 380 William St., until a torrential rainstorm in 2013 damaged the roof while the building was being renovated. Staff moved 20,000 documents and artifacts to other sites, primarily to a shabby warehouse at 50 Myrtle St. in the city’s Pacific Industrial Area.

The move was supposed to be temporary but, almost six years later, the bulk of the valuable collection remains in the warehouse. It’s too cramped for staff to work properly and is hidden in an out-of-the-way location that discourages public visits.

But the bigger concern is the safety of the collection. Fragile items, many more than a century old, will disintegrate without special temperature and humidity controls that are not available in the warehouse.

Unfortunately, the proposal from the Winnipeg Foundation doesn’t mean the archives’ ordeal is over.

The foundation offered the city up to $5 million toward two projects; renovating the former home of the archives, and building a cycling and pedestrian bridge across the Assiniboine River. The foundation’s offer is only about 20 per cent of the total cost of the two projects, and is intended to induce city council to fund the capital projects in its 2019 budget.

The bottom line is that it’s way too early for Winnipeg’s long-suffering archivists to start packing boxes for a move back to the former Carnegie Library. It’s up to council whether it will continue to ignore the archives’ plight, or whether the foundation’s offer will entice the city to make the archives a budget priority.

It would seem to be an ideal time to show the city archives some love. Winnipeg’s history will be front and centre throughout 2019 as schools and community groups mark the 100th anniversary of the Winnipeg General Strike, for which the archives is a rich source of primary documents and unique pictures.

Also, as recommended by the Fort Garry Historical Society, restoration work on the former Carnegie Library could become a focal project to celebrate Maniitoba’s 150th anniversary in 2020, as well as the the 150th birthday of the city of Winnipeg in 2023.

Winnipeg can be proud of high-quality facilities such as the new $65-million Inuit Art Centre, the Manitoba Museum, the Millennium Library and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights.

It’s unimaginable that any of these wonderful institutions would be suddenly sentenced to a drab warehouse that is embarrassingly deficient for its work.

But that’s what happened to the city archives six years ago. With the financial encouragement from the Winnipeg Foundation, city council now has the opportunity to bring the archives back from its humiliating exile.

 

Carl DeGurse is a member of the Free Press editorial board.

carl.degurse@freepress.mb.ca