1890s Little Magazines: Yellow Nineties 2.0

Posted on April 11, 2024 by olivia.wong

Black and white print of three women with ornamental wings — Flower of the Grass Headpiece by John Duncan from the Yellow Nineties 2.0 Database of Ornaments

Do you know the Yellow Nineties 2.0 database? It is an open-access resource dedicated to the study of eight late-Victorian “little magazines” produced between 1889 and 1905. The brief period is known as the “Yellow Nineties” after The Yellow Book, a controversial quarterly publication that embodied the “decadent” culture of the fin de siècle.

Toronto Metropolitan University professor Lorraine Janzen Kooistra spearheaded the Yellow Nineties 2.0 website, a digitization project that has evolved into a world-class online database composed of searchable editions of each publication, a database of textual ornaments found in the issues, peer-reviewed essays on the “little magazine” contributors and much more research on the period and the people who produced these works. The scholarly site is dedicated to the study of The Yellow Book, The Dial, The Pagan Review, The Evergreen, The Savoy, The Pageant, The Green Sheaf and The Venture. Many of the physical publications held at Toronto Metropolitan University Libraries Special Collections were digitized to create online versions for the database.

To celebrate the Yellow Nineties 2.0’s completion, TMU’s Special Collections is hosting an exhibition until the end of April 2024 showcasing the Victorian “little magazines” in our holdings.

Black and white print of the spring almanac with images representing the astrological signs — Spring Almanac by Helen Hay from the Yellow Nineties 2.0 Database of Ornaments

Over the years, the “little magazines” held in Special Collections alongside the Yellow Nineties 2.0 database have facilitated interactive student workshops and research creation through TMU’s English department among other partnerships on campus. Explore the Y90s Classroom website to learn more about the research and exhibitions created using these collections.

Student have shared their initial reactions after being introduced to the Yellow Nineties 2.0 and the physical copies held at TMU Special Collections below:

What a treat to hold a piece of art and literary history in your hands! Interacting with the collection online and in person is like night and day – they complement each other. While the online collection is wonderful for facilitating remote research, these magazines truly are art objects and must be appreciated in their proper, corporeal form. Nothing can compare to the opportunity to interact with the item itself. It’s a tremendous privilege to reach into the past and touch the same pages that were lovingly designed, printed, and bound, by literature lovers of the past. While there are no time-machines at TMU, historical literary collections are the next best thing.
Cameron Wheeler, TMU English Department Student

black and white print of three flowers — Spring in Languedoc by Alice Gray from the Yellow Nineties 2.0 Database of Ornaments

History preserved in time—a glimpse at the lives and creative pursuits of those who lived over a century before us.

It was very interesting to me that quite a large amount of the pages in some of the magazines were white, compared to present-day magazines which cover every single empty space with something. This really allows the reader to focus their attention on the sole thing that the page is presenting to them, whether it be a short story, a poem or a piece of art.
Erik Tahiliani, TMU English Department Student

page from The Evergreen with a poem titled Love Shall Stay — Love Shall Stay by Margaret Armour from The Evergreen, Autumn 1895

To view the current exhibition 1890s Little Magazines: Art for Art’s Sake in Print , visit us on the 4th floor of the TMU Libraries Building. The current exhibition, available until April 30th 2024, features several of the “Little Magazines” held at TMU Special Collections, including The Dial, The Yellow Book, The Evergreen, The Savoy, The Pageant and The Venture.

1890s Little Magazines: Art for Art’s Sake in Print

Posted on March 22, 2024 by olivia.wong

by Holly Forsythe Paul

After the great success of the Kelmscott Press under the direction of William Morris (1834-1896), artists and bookmakers recognized that there was a niche audience willing to buy expensive books with daring or progressive subject matter as long as they were beautiful.

This change in the notion of the reading public, its taste and, particularly, its morality, liberated artists to make increasingly exotic books and periodicals. The ‘little magazines’ of the 1890s sprang up in this context. Beautifully designed and illustrated, they embody a different set of values from those we associate with Victorian orthodoxy: celebrating gendered, sexual, regional, or social alternatives.

Printing changed in the 1890s, starting with the Pre Raphaelite concept of total book design, and the Arts & Crafts return to artisanal craftsmanship. High-quality volumes could be sold for very high prices and no longer needed a mass audience in order to become financially viable productions. First-rate artists were drawn from the canvas to the page as technological developments gave them more control and the development of a niche, connoisseur audience gave them more thematic flexibility. The “Little Magazines” of the 1890s are among the most prized results: an outburst of sophisticated, beautiful publications by the most talented, avant-garde artists of the Aesthetic Movement.

The current exhibition, available until April 30th 2024, features several of the “Little Magazines” held at TMU Special Collections, including The Dial, The Yellow Book, The Evergreen, The Savoy, The Pageant and The Venture.

The Dial: An Occasional Publication (5 issues, 1889-1897)

Produced by joint editors Charles Ricketts (1866-1931) and Charles Shannon, The Dial featured art and literature, much of it produced by a core bohemian circle who congregated at Ricketts and Shannon’s home. Unlike most Art Nouveau magazines, The Dial prominently features wood engraving and lithography, illustrative techniques in which the artist controls the means of production. Although only five issues were produced by a small group of artists for a niche audience. the artisanal integrity and harmonious design of The Dial had a major impact, influencing a revival in wood engraving and leading to Ricketts’s founding of The Vale Press (1896-1904).

The Yellow Book: An Illustrated Quarterly (13 issues, 1894-1897)

The Yellow Book embodies the “decadent” culture of the fin de siècle. Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898) proposed a quarterly that would focus equally on art and literature to the publisher John Lane (1854-1925) with Beardsley as art editor & principal artist while Henry Harland (1861-1905) acted as literary editor. Taking the colour yellow as a nod to risqué Continental literature and producing grotesque and suggestive images designed to shock the uninitiated, Beardsley courted controversy and found it. Fearful of Beardsley’s association with Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) when the latter was arrested for “gross indecency,” Lane fired Beardsley. The change from daring to conservative content that starts with the fifth issue highlights Beardsley’s impact on the early volumes.

The Evergreen (4 issues, 1895-1896/7)

Reflecting the diverse concerns of its polymath sponsor, Patrick Geddes (1854-1932), The Evergreen blends interests in ecology and urban renewal with a celebration of the Scottish Renascence and the Celtic revival.

These conservationist & post-colonial priorities are manifest in the periodical’s appearance, particularly its type. The Evergreen was printed by Edinburgh’s foremost arts-and-crafts printer, Walter Blaikie (1848-1928), and deliberately revives Celtic art in its ornaments. Copies bearing the coloured leather bindings designed by Charles Mackie (1862-1920), with a stylized tree on the upper cover, are especially prized.

The Savoy (8 volumes, 1896)

When Aubrey Beardsley was fired from his role editing The Yellow Book, Leonard Smithers (1861-1907) seized the opportunity to enlist the talented artist. Like The Yellow Book, The Savoy combined art and literature, and adopted the format of the book, with stiff board covers, high-quality paper, and fine illustrations. In its pages, we can trace Beardsley’s departure from the influence of Japanese woodcuts to the rococo style of 18^th-century France, with much more fine detail and texture. After two quarterly issues, Smithers retooled The Savoy as a monthly magazine, changing its format, streamlining the contents, and lowering the price. Although it ultimately failed to find an audience, it is a remarkable attempt to extend avant-garde art to a wider public.

The Pageant (2 volumes, 1896 & 1897)

Edited by Charles Shannon (1863-1937) and Gleeson White (1851-1898), The Pageant connects the little magazines to the earlier genre of the Christmas Annual. Like the Ladies’ Annuals that had been a dominant genre in the book market in the 1830s, The Pageant offered reproductions of famous works of art in print. Unlike its predecessors, this avant-garde journal had a distinctly sophisticated & intellectual array of content, including art history, ancient myth, modern western culture, and decadent cosmopolitanism. In this respect, The Pageant connected the Aesthetic movement to a long tradition of European art.

The Venture: An Annual of Art and Literature (2 issues, 1903-1905)

The Venture was published by gallery owner John Baillie (1868-1926) and edited by Laurence Housman (1865-1959) and W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965). Determined to make The Venture into a “book beautiful”, Baillie enlisted James J. Guthrie (1874-1952) to print the letterpress and wood engravings of the first volume and Bernard Newdigate (1869-1944) to print the letterpress for volume two in collaboration with specialists in etchings, line blocks, lithographs, and photogravures.
The Venture is beautiful and notable for its high literary quality, but failed to find a large audience. As its title indicates, producing a high-brow annual was always imagined as a risk.

Cover of The Venture with a person using a bow and arrow

Highlights from the Canadian Community Cookbook Collection

Posted on December 12, 2023 by olivia.wong

The Canadian Community Cookbook Collection contains over 250 community cookbooks, culinary textbooks, and company publications related to food products dating from 1888 to the early 2000s. It was donated to Special Collections in 2021 by Dr. Ian Mosby, a faculty member from TMU’s Department of History.

We are featuring an assortment of cookbooks in this blog, as well as in the display case on the 4th floor of the Libraries, to highlight the wide range of genres within culinary publications. We hope that these windows into Canadian culinary history, and especially the festive recipes, will inspire you to try making a new dish, or watch the Great Canadian Baking Show during the winter break!

A large portion of the collection is made of community cookbooks. These were created by women’s associations, church groups, hospitals, and community groups for fundraising purposes. They compile and publish recipes from community members and include the contributor’s name in the cookbook. These are simple publications, and would often offset printing costs by including advertisements for local businesses.

Specialties from Sugar and Spice (1948)
Recipes from Specialties from Sugar and Spice (1948)
The Kelowna Hospital Women’s Auxiliary Cook Book : a collection of tried and tested recipes (1936)
Local advertisements and recipes from The Kelowna Hospital Women’s Auxiliary Cook Book (1936)
Kid’s Kosher Cookbook
Latke recipe from the Kid’s Kosher Cookbook

Another genre is advertising cookbooks. These were published by food companies, such as gelatin, flour and corn starch producers. They often include detailed photographs or illustrations of dishes that can be made using their products. Since these were used for marketing purposes, they can help us understand trends in culinary styles and kitchen technologies.

Today …. what salad …. what dessert?: Jell-O brings DOZENS of answers…. (1928)
Desert recipes from Jell-O brings DOZENS of answers… (1928)
Salad recipe from Jell-O brings DOZENS of answers… (1928)
Working People’s Cookbook : The Practical Answer to “What’s For dinner” in Less Than an Hour (1976)
Salad recipe from Working People’s Cookbook (1976)

The collection has several educational cookbooks, which provide culinary instructions for people wanting to sharpen their culinary skills. There are also government sponsored cookbooks, which outline recommendations for food preparations, dietary guidelines, and often highlight agricultural products from the region.

Cookbook cover with a person boiling water over the stove

Book cover with a woman in blue holding a bowl of produce

Book cover with yellow illustrations of cheese

Although these cookbooks reflect the time in which they were published (Jell-O salads!), the recipes are still incredibly fun to make, and turns out they can be quite delicious! To celebrate this new collection, the TMU Libraries staff who catalogued and processed the cookbooks recreated a dish from the collection to share with others (pictured below!) To view more cookbooks from this collection, stop by the Libraries’ 4th floor exhibition case by Archives & Special Collections, or explore the titles through our online finding aid.

2022 Alcuin Awards for Book Design

Posted on November 9, 2023 by olivia.wong

Since 1984, the Alcuin Society has recognized excellence in book design with a national awards program. The TMU Libraries are happy to showcase the award winners in nine trade book categories for the 2022 publishing period. The books will be on display in the exhibition window outside of the Archives & Special Collections (ASC), 4th Floor of the Library building, from November 7-29, 2023.

Books are judged in the following categories:

Children’s picture books
Comics (book-length comics with strong visual storytelling and dedication to production values; e.g., graphic novels)
Limited editions
Pictorial, including exhibition catalogues
Poetry
Prose: fiction
Prose: illustrated
Prose: non-fiction
Reference, including how-to, DIY, cooking, travel

See The Alcuin Society’s website for a full list of the 35 winners.

Interested in reading these fabulous books? The TMU Libraries have several of the award winners in the collection, including the titles highlighted below:

305 lost buildings of Canada NA740.5.L67 B54 2022

All of the books are on loan from the Alcuin Society and the Toronto Metropolitan University Libraries are pleased to be one of the Toronto stops for this national touring exhibition. Later, the books will be touring Germany. For a full list of venues, see the Alcuin Society website.

LGBT History Month

Posted on October 18, 2023 by olivia.wong

Explore the vibrant 2SLGBTQ+ history at TMU! For LGBT History Month we are highlighting key moments and achievements of the 2SLGBTQ+ communities at TMU and more broadly in Toronto.

The Wilde ’82 History Conference was one of the first North American gatherings dedicated to the recovery of LGBT histories. It was held on TMU campus on June 30-July 3 1982. The name of the conference was in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Oscar Wilde’s famous North American Tour.

In 1986, TMU started offering the first LGBT course called “New Perspectives on Gay and Lesbian Realities.” The course was aimed at members of the LGBT community, allies and families.

Colourful cover of a 1986-87 Continuing Education course calendar

New Perspectives on Gay and Lesbian Realities course description

During the 1980s and 1990s, the TMU theatre hosted the Lesbian and Gay Community Appeal’s annual fundraiser called Fruit Cocktail. The show included vaudeville-style acts with cast members dressed in fruit costumes!

light green program for the 1989 Fruit Cocktail

Black and white images of the Fruit Cocktail performances

Pink and turquoise program for the 1991 Fruit Cocktail

In 1992, TMU’s campus community radio station CLKN recorded a program at the Pride parade. Listen CKLN’s Queer Radio pride report.

Did you know the TMU Libraries has copies of the Body Politic, a Canadian monthly queer magazine published from 1971 to 1987? It was one of Canada’s first significant gay publications, and played a prominent role in the development of the LGBT community in Canada. In 1973, the newspaper also spurred the creation of the ArQuives in Toronto in 1973, one of the largest independent 2SLGBTQ+ archives in the world and the only archive in Canada with a mandate to collect at a national level.

cover of Body Politic: A magazine for gay liberation — The Body Politic – issues available online and in Special Collections

Throughout the month of October, visit our LGBT History Month display on the 4th floor of the Library building to view more material from Archives & Special Collections related to TMU queer history, or join us for the Pink Libraries Tour on October 24th and 26th.

Kodak Canada Archives at The 2023 Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival

Posted on April 20, 2023 by olivia.wong

Photographs from TMU Libraries’ Special Collections are currently on view at Mount Dennis Library as part of Robert Burley’s exhibition The Last Day of Work. The CONTACT Photography Festival exhibit includes historical records from the Kodak Canada Corporate Archives and Heritage Collection, including a 2004 letter announcing the closure of Kodak Heights, the company’s former manufacturing plant in Toronto’s Mount Dennis neighbourhood. The 48-acre lot was the home of Kodak Canada from 1912 until its closure in 2005.

At this time, we are looking to expand our collection of oral history recordings of past employees. If you are a former Kodak Heights employee or family member with ties to Kodak Canada and are interested in participating, please email us at asc@torontomu.ca.

2005.001.06.04.151 – Group photo of Kodak employees
2005.001.06.04.152 – Sheet Film department closing group photo
2005.001.06.05.209 – Hot air balloon at Kodak’s open house
2005.001.06.05.183 – Business Imaging Systems group photo

The Kodak Canada Archives has extensive photographs, publications, and memorabilia related to employees and corporate life at Kodak. Here are some highlights, including a 16mm film about the history of Kodak Canada, pages from a scrapbook with postcards and photographs taken during employee baby showers and retirement parties, and a souvenir brochure used in tours of the Kodak Heights’ facilities.

Excerpt from 2005.001.01.2.003 “The Kodak Album” 16mm promotional film about Kodak Canada.

Woman in a brown jacket with a flower pin cutting a round cake with red and pink frosting. — Anna’s baby shower 1980

A yellow page from a scrapbook with a postcard of Moraine Lake in Alberta. Text on the page says "Hi, Well we made it here. Didn't see the sun until we got to B.C. Seeing all the sights. On our way to Vancouver Island Now. Tell ya all about it when I return. Patty & Bill." — Anna’s baby shower 1980

The first pages of a promotional brochure. The brochure says "The Home of Kodak in Canada. A Souvenir of your Visit to Kodak Heights, Toronto. — 2005.001.07.03.05.04 – The home of Kodak in Canada brochure. A PDF version of the brochure can be found on our database.

To learn more about Kodak’s history in Toronto, visit the online exhibition Kodak Canada: The Early Years (1899-1939) by TMU’s Film + Photography Preservation and Collections Management program .

Celebrating Black History with Photography Books & Catalogues

Posted on February 16, 2022 by olivia.wong

Special Collections has a variety of books related to the history, production and exhibition of photography. In honour of Black History Month, we are featuring exhibition catalogues and books centering Black photographers, artists and curators. Although this is a small sample from the collection, all of these works highlight the importance of self-documentation in photography as a way to celebrate communities and counter the historical misrepresentation of Black people.

In the 1948 book “Camera Portraits : the techniques and principles of documentary portraiture” Gordon Parks shares insight into how he photographed 40 individuals with his unique style of photography. He recounts his interactions with the subjects and analyses his overall approach to the portrait. Parks also includes valuable technical elements for each photograph, such as the camera model, exposure, film stock and light source.

Cover of the book Imagining Families: Images and Voices. Two photographs are shown, one depicts a while family with a young Black boy, the other is a similar portrait but heavily scratched out.

“Imagining Families : Images and Voices” is the catalogue for the 1994 inaugural exhibition at the National African American Museum at the Smithsonian Institute. It was shown at the Anacostia Community Museum, years before the Smithsonian established a permanent building for the National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2016.

Deborah Willis and Claudine Brown curated the works of 15 artists who examine roles played within families and communities. The catalogue recounts how the exhibition was created when the Smithsonian was contemplating the need for a dedicated museum to preserve African American history. They were unsure if they would receive enough donations to build a museum collection and some believed that African American material culture was already preserved in other museum branches.

The exhibition served as an inspiration for underrepresented communities to self-document their stories and validated personal narratives as a key part of history.

Front book cover with the title "A Portland Family album: Self-portrait of African American Community" with a black and white photograph depicting two Black women in front of a house

The 1995 exhibition “A Portland Family Album : self-portrait of an African-American community.” was developed using archival photographs. The images were donated by several local families and new prints were created for exhibition purposes. The works were shown at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland.

Cover of book with the text "Contact Sheet" and "Embracing Eatonville". The cover has a black and white image of a house with a large tree in front.

The 2003-2004 exhibition “Embracing Eatonville : a photographic survey” presented works by Dawoud Bey, Lonnie Graham, Carrie Mae Weems and Deborah Willis. Eatonville, Florida is one of the oldest Black towns to be incorporated in the United States. In 2002, the four artists were tasked to capture the spirit of this historical city through documentary photography. Each photographer brought their unique approach to this exhibition to provide a snapshot of the community and its landscape. The exhibition was shown at Light Work in New York and the Robert B. Menschel Media Center in Eatonville.

Special Collections books can be searched through the Library’s catalogue. The Library also has access to fantastic documentaries on the topic, including Through a Lens Darkly which is based on the book “Reflections in Black : a history of Black photographers, 1840 to the present” by Deborah Willis. The documentary explores the significance of family photo albums and examines the depiction of Black subjects throughout history.

Our book collection is constantly growing! Keep an eye for the announcement of the winners of this year’s First Edition Book Award.

Back book cover with the title "A Portland Family album: Self-portrait of African American Community" with a black and white photograph of a Black woman wearing a hat — Back cover of “A Portland Family Album : self-portrait of an African-American community”

War Efforts at Kodak Heights

Posted on November 11, 2021 by olivia.wong

Kodak is most likely known for its photography related wart efforts, such as their advertisements encouraging citizens to send images to soldiers or the Vest Pocket camera sold as “The Soldier’s Kodak.”¹ Nevertheless, they were also supporting wartime demands through employee initiatives and by shifting their manufacturing plants at Kodak Heights in Toronto.

A Kodak advertisement titled "Send Him Snapshots Every Week" with a soldier holding photographs — 2005.001.03.2.001.10 1944 Kodak Advertisement

A group of employees organized the Kodak War Efforts Club to send packages overseas with sweets, knitted goods and magazines. In addition, they partnered with the Red Cross to host a weekly Kodak Blood Clinic and rewarded employees with badges for recurring donations.²

Kodak War Efforts Club featured in the May 1945 edition of KODAK magazine

In 1941, Kodak Heights was approached by the Department of Munitions and Supply to manufacture compasses. They had previously built tools and parts for combat airplanes, but this was their first venture in producing instruments for the armed forces.³ As seen in many sectors, women stepped into manufacturing positions during the war, and Kodak was no different in finding new roles for women to support the production of compasses.

In their internal employee publication, the company celebrated this endeavour and shared positive feedback received from the U.S. War Department as well as their own employees who were redeployed in the war fronts and recognized the C.K.C engraving (Canadian Kodak Company) on a compass.⁴

Kodak Heights even exhibited images of the compass in the Employee Building cafeteria to promote the initiative among staff. These images may have remained on the walls as a memory of their war efforts, because by fall of 1945 Kodak had already pivoted back to its regular production of cameras and photographic material.

Two Kodak compasses on a white background — 2005.001.06.03.327 Kodak Mark III Compass

Kodak had several internal magazines which provide incredible first hand accounts of the day to day life at the company. Running from 1936 to 1955, “KODAK: A Magazine for Kodak Employees” was a bimonthly internal publication designed to communicate the activities of Canadian Kodak and its employees. For more information on war efforts at Kodak Heights, explore the publications in our database or on the Internet Archive for online versions.

Roger, Andrew C. ‘Amateur Photography by Soldiers of the Canadian Expeditionary Force’. Archivaria, vol. 26, no. January, 1988, pp. 163–68.
‘Kodak Meets the Wartime Challenge (Part 1)’. KODAK: A Magazine for Kodak Employees, vol. 1, no. 3, Apr. 1945, pp. 1–2.
‘Kodak Meets the Wartime Challenge (Part 2)’. KODAK: A Magazine for Kodak Employees, vol. 1, no. 4, May 1945, pp. 1–3.
Ibid.

COVID-19 Community Archive Contest Winners

Posted on August 26, 2021 by olivia.wong

Thank you all for participating in our COVID-19 Community Archive submission contest!

The COVID-19 Community Archive seeks to preserve and make accessible content that was captured and created by students, faculty, staff and alumni about their lived experiences during the pandemic. Our goal in developing this digital portal is to serve as a repository for those of us who may be documenting this historic moment.

We received incredible submissions throughout the summer contest. Here are the three randomly selected winning submissions:

Illustration of a person wearing sunglasses, a hat, a hoodie and a face mask on a beach — Self Portrait #8 During Covid Lockdown by Jerry Waese

Two loaves of bread on a navy tablecloth — Self Portrait #8 During Covid Lockdown by Jerry Waese

Although the contest is closed, you can still submit your work to the University’s COVID-19 Digital Community Archive Project by using our online submission form. We accept all types of works: photographs, audiovisual recordings, artworks and written content reflecting your experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. Join us in this collaborative project to document these unprecedent times!

Archives A to Z: Part 4

Posted on March 22, 2021 by olivia.wong

We’re joining the Archives of Ontario in their #ArchivesAtoZ month-long campaign. The aim is to increase the public’s awareness of archives and their collections. We’ll be sharing four blog posts throughout the month showcasing items and collections from our holdings or archival concepts related to each letter of the alphabet.

March 1: A to F
March 8: G to M
March 15: N to S
March 22: T to Z

Truth and Reconciliation

In its final report in 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada called on museums, archives and educational institutions, among other groups, to respond to 94 Calls to Action. These calls provide a path for Canadians and institutions to begin to “redress the legacy of residential schools and advance the process of Canadian reconciliation.”

Although our holdings do not have extensive material that can supports these Calls to Action, the team at Archives & Special Collections has compiled a list of internal and external resources related to Egerton Ryerson, Residential Schools and Indigenous Peoples. Toronto Metropolitan University’s Aboriginal Educational Council has also created a document focused on Egerton Ryerson, the Residential School System and Truth and Reconciliation with detailed sources on the topic.

Front cover of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action report — Truth and Reconciliation
Commission of Canada – See the full reports here

University Status

Opened in 1948 as the Ryerson Institute of Technology, Ryerson has been granting degrees for 49 years – the first of which were handed out on May 26, 1972 to graduates in Interior Design, Business Management, and Geodetic Sciences. Nineteen years later, almost to the day, on May 27, 1991 the Ryerson Board of Governors and Academic Council (Senate) gave their support to the proposal the the school seek full university status. Two years later on June 1, 1993 the dream was realized when Ryerson Polytechnic University was recognized by Royal Assent. The oversized letter and the T-shirt in this picture are housed in Archives and Special Collections (RG 122.12)

View-Masters

The Bass Stereoscopic Photography Collection has 162 pieces of stereo viewing equipment, including 44 View-Masters. These stereoscopic viewers first appeared at the 1939 New York World Fair. View-Masters, a name trademarked by Sawyer’s Inc, use circular “reels” with seven stereoscopic images made from 16mm Kodachrome transparencies. Unlike the original wooden stereoscope viewers, View-Masters are usually made of plastic or metal.

Our collection has a variety of different types of viewers, such as the GAF Talking View-Master, which incorporated an audio record that synchronized sound with the stereoscopic slides. The Big Bird camera-shaped 3D viewer, a staff favourite, has a built-in reel of 7 diametrical, 16 mm colour transparencies of Sesame Street characters teaching the alphabet.

Two View-Master examples: the GAF Talking View-Master (2018.09.02.014) and
the Big Bird 3D camera viewer (2018.09.02.159)

World War II

Did you know Toronto Metropolitan University had a connection to World War II? The original building on campus Ryerson Hall, whose façade is the entrance to the Ryerson Athletic Centre in the Kerr Hall Quad, housed both the Royal Canadian Air Force Initial Training School No. 6 and the Dominion-Provincial War Emergency Training Program between 1941-1945. To learn more about the Royal Canadian Air Force’s training facilities visit their web page At the end of World War II, the building would house the Training and Re-establishment Institute (TRIT), a place for veterans to learn a trade. TRIT ran between 1945-1948, and Ryerson Institute of Technology, which opened in September 1948, evolved out of that organization – offering the same courses in the first couple of years of our existence. Take a look at RG 58 Vocational Training Schools and Training and Re-establisment Institutes, F 183 James A. Moore fonds and F 858 Michael Zabinsky fonds to see more records we have related to the Training and Re-establishment Institute.

Interior view of the Electronics Department of the Training and Re-establishment Institute (RG 58.18)

XV Winter Olympic Ceremony

The Paddy Sampson Fonds consists of textual records and audiovisual material related to television shows and specials intended for broadcast on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC). Sampson joined the CBC as a stage hand in 1952, and later became a producer and director for the broadcaster. Some of the notable programs he worked on include “Program X” and the renowned hour long 1966 music special, “The Blues”. The Fonds also contains research material related to Sampson’s independent productions, such as the 1988 opening and closing ceremonies for the XV Winter Olympics in Calgary.

3 photographs of Paddy Sampson on set, one with Harry Belafonte — 2010.003.03 – On-set photographs of Paddy Sampson

Young Readers

Special Collections’ book holdings include the Children’s Literature Archive. The collection was established through the Centre for Digital Humanities in 2009 and was transferred to Special Collections in 2017. It contains over 2200 books published between 1701 and 1940 and continues to grow. Its particular strengths are adventure stories, fairy tales, and Canadiana, but also includes strong holdings in poetry, picture books, and pedagogical works such as science texts and primers, along with biographies of notable authors and other scholarly studies. Explore the collection through the Centre for Digital Humanities’ exhibition website or through the Library catalogue.

3 book covers from the Children's Literature Archive — 3 book covers from the Children’s Literature Archive

Zeiss Ikon

Our Heritage Camera Collection has over 677 pieces of photographic equipment, including several cameras by the company Zeiss Ikon. Zeiss was initially an optical workshop in Germany during the mid-1800s, and started building camera lenses in the 1890s. Zeiss Ikon was created in 1926 by the merger of four camera manufacturers: Contessa-Nettel, Ernemann, Goerz and Ica. The newly founded partnership combined thousands of cameras patents held by the individual companies. Explore the Zeiss website for more information on the history of the camera company.

We hope you have enjoyed our Archives A to Z blog post series. Explore the hashtag #ArchivesAtoZ to see what other repositories have shared online!

Share this:

by Holly Forsythe Paul

The Dial: An Occasional Publication (5 issues, 1889-1897)

The Yellow Book: An Illustrated Quarterly (13 issues, 1894-1897)

The Evergreen (4 issues, 1895-1896/7)

The Savoy (8 volumes, 1896)

The Pageant (2 volumes, 1896 & 1897)

The Venture: An Annual of Art and Literature (2 issues, 1903-1905)

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: