The Dr. John Archer Library & Archives and the ta-tawâw Student Centre are pleased to welcome Michelle Good, author of the award-winning novel Five Little Indians. Please join us at the ta-tawâw Student Centre (Research and Innovation Centre, Room 108) on Friday, March 24th from 11:30 am – 1:00 pm. Michelle Good will read passages from the novel Five Little Indians, followed by a question and answer session.
This event is part of the One Book One Province program organized by the Saskatchewan Library Association. The program will see libraries, book clubs, and individuals all across Saskatchewan join together in March 2023 to read this book and share discussions about the story.
Michelle Good is a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation. She has worked for Indigenous organizations from the time she was a teenager. She obtained her law degree at the age of 43 and worked primarily with Residential School Survivors. In 2014 Ms. Good obtained her Master of Fine Arts Degree in Creative Writing from UBC. Five Little Indians is her first novel. It has won several awards, including the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Amazon First Novel Award, and the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Award.
Archives & Special Collections hosted William Smith, a researcher from Manitoba, in our reading room more than ten times in the last two years. William kindly shared the following statement about the work that keeps bringing him back to Archives:
The Trail of the Kovacs by William Smith (Kovacs)
I am working on a publication that aims to follow a trail first discovered by Andrew H. Marchbin of Ottawa. Marchbin encountered Paul d’Esterhazy’s correspondence with the Government of Canada’s Department of Interior records somewhere around 1930. This led him to ask the Department to donate the records to Archives Canada, which became the “90895” files, and corresponds to the number assigned to the first letter received from Count Esterhazy in 1885. The title of the file was “Paul d’Esterhazy Hungarian Colonization Scheme”.
In 1934, Marchbin summarized his findings by writing papers that appeared in the Slavonic and East European review. He gave numerous references to the collection he had found in Ottawa and formed strong opinions of those who initiated colonization schemes with Sir. John A MacDonald, Prime Minister of the Conservative government at the time. He stated before the Canadian Historical Society at McGill University that “Count Paul O de Esterhazy sowed the first seeds of Colonization of Canada of Southeast Europeans”. (2002-2 box 1, book 1, p.52.1)
This brings us to Martin Kovacs, a history professor at the University of Regina of Hungarian descent. Kovacs followed in Marchbin’s footsteps and proceeded to collect all the records pertaining to “Count” Esterhazy from the Public Archives of Canada. This material enabled him to write numerous manuscripts, papers and three publications throughout his career about his “Magyar” heritage.
In 1981, I became aware of the Martin Kovacs research material and contacted him in Regina. Correspondence led to the two of us meeting in Winnipeg during a conference he was attending, and he asked that I bring my father as well. Martin critiqued Marchbin’s writings for me so I could proceed with the writing of our own local history of Huns Valley, Manitoba. Martin said he recalled seeing an interview of my Great Grandfather, Joseph Kovacs, at the time before he anglicized his name to Smith. Martin was able to give a detailed recollection, including the point of place that my Great Grandfather was born, how many children he had, and that he was a baker in Hungary. These details lined up directly with my own personal research on him. Martin offered to find the interview and share it with me. Unfortunately, he was never able to locate it, but that may have been a blessing in disguise as it brought me to Regina to find the article myself.
In my retirement, I finally found time for a long-delayed trip to Regina to locate the interview in the Kovacs’ collection with my Great Grandfather. I tracked it down at the University of Regina Archives and established e-mail correspondence with both the University Archivist and the Archives Assistant for Private Records. By this time Martin had passed away and most of his research was in the care of his wife, Anna, who had intentions of donating her late husband’s records to the Archives. This material amounts to approximately 10 linear feet, including textual records and audio material along with hundreds of photographs.
In 2022, the task began to find Martin’s reference to that interview with my Great Grandfather. My searching was rewarded on about the fourth of my monthly visits to the archives, with all the staff, due to this momentous occasion, receiving my gratitude by way of flowers and chocolates!
This shallow dive into the University’s archival records, however, also exposed me to all of Martin’s research on Count Esterhazy and the treasure trove of material related to this mysterious gentleman. That is how the adventure for the book I’m writing began.
Additional notes:
The Martin Kovacs collection is a great resource for anyone doing family research and genealogy. His detailed material covers the communities of: Bekosvar (Kipling, SK) Esterhaz, Kaposvar (Esterhazy, SK) Stockholm, SK Otthon, SK Plunkett, SK Lethbridge, AB
His material also covers many of the “one room schoolhouses” in these areas too numerous to mention. And last but not least, a priceless collection of pictures and family letters.
William Smith researching at the U of R Archives, 2022. Photo: Crista BradleyCount Esterhazy’s attendance of church service during his official visit from New York. University of Regina Archives and Special Collections, Martin Kovacs Fonds, 2005-29, Box 2, File 19, Scrapbook of Photographs, Image 1
Today is International Women’s Day, giving us pause to reflect on gender inequality, discrimination, and the opportunity to celebrate women’s achievements.
Sometimes data are not missing or invisible because they have not been collected, they’re invisible because they’re being protected. In many cases, data on Indigenous communities are not always accessible because Indigenous peoples have data sovereignty; meaning, they have the right to control the collection, storage, and access to their data.
As we move towards further decolonization and reconciliation, the need to uphold Indigenous data sovereignty becomes more evident. Due to colonialism and racism, historically data sovereignty was violated. The prevailing practice was research conducted on Indigenous peoples instead of with Indigenous peoples. Often the research violated basic ethical practices such as informed consent and right to withdraw and in some cases was abusive and deadly to Indigenous peoples. Research was frequently conducted on Indigenous children forced into the residential school system. For example, the abusive research and data collection practices in the Nutrition Studies conducted in the 1940s and 50s. These studies involved Indigenous children being malnourished and starved so researchers could determine food guidelines. Not only were these practices grossly abusive, inhumane, and unethical, they are also still affecting the health of Indigenous peoples today.
We’re happy to share that the latest, upgraded version of Quick Find is now available! Quick Find is the Dr. John Archer Library and Archives’ search interface, which includes millions of electronic and physical items. The latest version of Quick Find also includes some new features:
Access to the Archives’ digitized collections, including historical materials and art collections
Integrated chat widgets, so you can get the support you need while searching
Browsing journals by discipline
Sending links to WhatsApp and other social media platforms
Congratulation to our two winners of the Blind Date with a Sask Book contest, Ariston Bodnarchuk (photo 1) and Nicholas Antonini (photo 2), shown here with Blind Date Event organizer Corina van den Berg of the Archer Library. Ariston and Nicholas each won a set of books donated by the University of Regina Press.
Monday, February 20th is Family Day in Saskatchewan, which means the Archer Library will switch to holiday hours for that day. The library building, main Help Desk and the IT Support desk will be open from 12:00 pm until 4:45 pm only. The Archives Help Desk will be closed for the day.
We will resume regular operating hours on Tuesday, February 21st. Our hours for Reading Week are the same as usual.
Archer Library is pleased to offer and host the third consecutive semester of the University of Regina Anti-Oppression Book Club.
The first meeting for Winter 2023 will be Thursday March 9 from 2:00pm-3:00pm via Zoom, discussing the book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Timeby Mark Haddon. Additional sessions will be March 16th and 23rd from 2-3pm respectively, and attendees are welcome to participate in any or all sessions as they are available.
We are pleased to announce two new trans-formative agreements with Canadian Science Publishing and Wiley. See link for full details and for other U of R author discounts.
