Mennonite Archives of Ontario Symbolic Closure in Support of the Global Climate Strike

As a gesture of support for the Global Climate Strike and to raise awareness of the effects of climate change on cultural heritage and community memory, the Mennonite Archives of Ontario will symbolically close on Friday, September 27, 2019 from 11:30-2:00.

How this will affect access to the Archives:

• The current exhibit, Growing Family, will be temporarily obscured
• Requests for archival information via phone and email will not be answered, unless urgent
• Drop-in visitors will be accommodated, but no archival appointments will be scheduled over this time period
• If it is possible for you to visit the Archives at another time, please consider doing so

Why?

• To draw attention to the threats posed to archives and other centres of knowledge by climate change. Around the world, cultural heritage and community memory is threatened by fires, floods, severe weather and environmental conflicts.
• To acknowledge that awareness is just the beginning. Archives require energy to maintain physical collections in stable condition. Digitization is not necessarily the answer. Server farms, data streaming, and the manufacture and use of digital devices also contribute to environmental problems. Solutions must be found.
• To invite everyone – historian, artist, scientist, engineer – to participate in this vital work: “From the past will come the future.”

“Some day some fellow will invent a way of concentrating and storing up sunshine to use instead of this old, absurd Prometheus scheme of fire....This scheme of combustion to get power makes me sick to think of – it is so wasteful.”

-Thomas Edison, 1916

Fraktur drawing by Rebecca Brubacher 1892-1967