↗ View this article in the original PDF newsletter
Like many other memory institutions across the globe, the Archives of Ontario is adding digital images from its collections to the Wikimedia Commons and encouraging researchers to use these resources to edit Wikipedia articles and to inspire other creative projects. Over the past six months, the AO has added more than 1,750 images from five separate collections to the Commons. Among them are 365 artworks and other related records created or collected by Elizabeth Simcoe. The AO selected works from the Simcoe family fonds as part of its first bulk collections upload because many of them provide some of the earliest visual documentation of the landscapes of Toronto and other areas in Upper Canada by European settlers. They record the experiences and worldview of Elizabeth Simcoe, who travelled throughout Upper and Lower Canada during the 1790s with her husband, John Graves Simcoe, the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada. Some of these works come from Elizabeth’s famous diaries. The recent Commons upload is the latest moment in the history of the Simcoe family fonds. These records were held
by descendants of Elizabeth Simcoe until their final transfer to Ontario in the late 1940s, when Dr. S. McLaughlan purchased and subsequently donated the collection to the University of Toronto. In 1952, the university transferred the Simcoe fonds to the AO (then known as the province’s Department of Archives and Records) by way of a long-term loan agreement. Although most of Elizabeth Simcoe’s sketches and watercolours are held at the Archives of Ontario (in a facility on the campus of York University) other repositories hold material she created throughout her lifetime. For example, the British Library holds 32 ink-on-birchbark works Simcoe presented to King George III upon her return to Britain in the late 1790s. The rise in popularity of the internet has provided new opportunities to make the Simcoe works more accessible and to increase awareness of them around the world. Circa 2001, the AO launched an online exhibit on its website about Simcoe’s years in North America and added digitized images from the Simcoe fonds to its online Visual Database. The AO believes that with high resolution images from the fonds on the Wikimedia Barracks at Queenston, about 1792, watercolour, 3¾” x 6” (6924)
12 The Fife and Drum December 2020 12 The Fife and Drum December 2020
Commons, more researchers will discover the sketches and watercolours. The images now available on the Wikimedia Commons are only a selection of the total Simcoe family fonds images held by the AO. Because of the pandemic, most archives staff have been exclusively working from home, and so we chose to upload images that the AO had already digitized. An additional consideration was how to describe the images for use within the Wiki ecosystem, since our in-house systems organize data very differently from Wikimedia. The Commons organizes images by category, so we created new categories for the Simcoe images and cross-referenced them to Commons categories already being used, such as ‘Ontario in art,’ ‘Maps of Ontario’ and ‘Quebec in art.’ The Archives of Ontario encourages readers to peruse these images on the Commons, add descriptive information, and share your feedback. Looking forward, the AO intends to expand its Wiki project with more image uploads from its collections and other initiatives that will encourage researchers within the Wiki ecosystem to use our records and share knowledge related to our collections. You can find the Simcoe images here.
Jay Young is an Outreach Officer at the Archives of Ontario. He holds a PhD in history from York University. Renee Saucier is an Archivist at the Archives of Ontario, and a volunteer at The ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives. Mrs. Simcoe’s Diaries in the edition by Mary Quayle Innis is available in the new Toronto Museums online shop.
The Fife and Drum 13 The Fife and Drum 13
Fort Chippawa on the Welland River, about 1795, drawing 4½” x 8¾” (7019) (detail) 250 Fort York Blvd, Toronto, Ontario M5V 3K9 info@fortyork.ca www.fortyork.ca
Original printed pages
