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October 2015

Ghosts in Special Collections & Archives

Tuesday, October 27, 2015 by Martha Lauzon

Guest post by Heather MacDonald. Heather is currently on contract in Special Collections & Archives, transcribing material from the Maines Pincock family fonds.

Just in time for Hallowe'en, we bring you a post about the ghosts hiding in our Spiritualism and Theosophy collection! These spirits lurk in the séance transcripts and can be heard through the spirit trumpet, which make up part of the Maines Pincock family fonds.

Alexander McNeill

Monday, October 19, 2015 by Martha Lauzon

Special Collections & Archives is currently under way with a bold new plan to barcode all of our materials (as the main library did in 1977). This project will ultimately give us greater control over our holdings both in terms of space available for new collections and also in terms of allowing us to better track the use of our collections.

While this is exciting enough on its own, co-op student Eva Lau discovered some material in an archival box that had been uncatalogued.

H. Spencer Clark, first aid certificates

Tuesday, October 13, 2015 by Martha Lauzon

Herbert Spencer Clark, born and educated in Toronto, graduated from the University of Toronto School of Applied Sciences in 1924, and pursued an engineering career for several years, most notably with the Ontario Hydro Electric Power Commission in building the Queenston-Chippewa Power Station.

The mandibles of Sinanthropus pekinensis (Peking Man)

Tuesday, October 6, 2015 by Martha Lauzon

In 1923, the first specimen (a molar) of a new human ancestor was found in Zhoukoudian, near Beijing, China. Many more fossils were found in the area, and Canadian paleontologist Davidson Black named this new ancestor Sinanthropus pekinensis, "Peking Man" (after the city of Beijing, spelled Peking before the Pinyin romanization system was adopted. The city was also known as Beiping or Peiping from 1928 to 1949). Today Sinanthropus is considered to be an example of Homo erectus.