A man carries a sandwich board of the Ontario Poultry Buyers during a strike, Kensington Market, Toronto, 1939.
This week is Archive Awareness Week #2019AAW and the OJA is running a social media campaign #AskAnArchivist to raise awareness of the services that archives provide. I
Q: Is there a holy grail item for an archivist? If so, what would that item be in general or for an OJA archivist? – Neil
A: Certainly, every archivist would likely relish in a discovery comparable to the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Magna Carta, but for the OJA, our search is much more modest. We are always on the lookout for home movies that document Kensington Market when it was known as the “Jewish Market” between the mid-1910s and the early 1950s. We have a large amount of material documenting Kensington, but moving image animates and brings to life this history in a way that still photographs and documents cannot. And, historic film footage of Kensington Market is surprisingly rare given its importance to the city’s history!
Ontario Jewish Archives, Blankenstein Family Heritage Centre, item 3875.
