Minutes

UPEI, Congress, 1 June 2026

Present:
  • In person:

Kevin Brushett (Royal Military College), Jill Campbell-Miller (Public Servant Government of Nova Scotia & Adjunct Professor Saint Mary’s University).

 

  • Virtually: Mark Hauck (PhD student in History at the Royal Military College, Kingston); Henrique Schlumberger (PhD student at the Federal University of Paraná (Brazil)); Dominique Marshall (Carleton University).

 

1. Welcome and introductions

All participants took 5 minutes each to present their work.

  • After finishing his book, Kevin is working on the relations between government and CIDA.
  • Mark, who has experience working in the humanitarian sector (with HOPE, the PWRDF, Oxfam Canada, the Anglican Church of Canada, etc.,) is defining his topic, around questions of humanitarianism in war zones, peace operations, possibly in Haiti.
  • Dominique is writing about the Humanitarian Emergency Archives project and about humanitarianism and Indigenous peoples in Canada, in addition to pursuing her history of Oxfam in Canada, including an archives project conducted with Chris Trainor, Chief Archivist at Carleton’s Archives and Special Collections.

 

2. Next year’s CNHH session at the 2027 CHA Annual meeting

The meeting will be organised again away from Congress, this time in Winnipeg. The Association of Canadian Archivists and the Canadian Museum of Human Rights will be closely involved and present. We agreed on a session on Prairie humanitarianism, with possible contributions about the Canadian Food Grain Bank the Mennonites, Ukrainian refugees, Oxfam farmers’ brigades. Dominique will circulate the call in the Fall of 2026, when the CHA makes its own call.

In an effort to resume the CNHH tradition of inviting local humanitarian organisations at the CNHH annual meeting, Mark will also contact the Canadian Food Grain Bank with whom he has worked in the past. Henrique suggested also contacting the Ukrainian Canadian Congress.

3. Archives

Kevin spoke of his work with CCIC in Ottawa and discussions he had been having about assisting them with the archives they have on location in downtown Ottawa. He will  contact Dominique when these discussions resume.

Dominique spoke of the efforts of Sonya DeLaat and herself to contact the people in charge of the old CIDA Photo library with the help of Brendan Kelly, Chief Historian of Global Affairs Canada. Kevin offered to help by contacting Brendan.

She also encouraged colleagues to consider making contributions to the Discovery Survey of the Humanitarian Archives Emergency.

4. Social media

 

5. Website, updates & suggestions
         a. Website

Dominique gave an update of the causes of the ongoing inaccessibility of the website and explained that she was in the process of solving them.

         b. Possible blogs

Jill offered to write a summary of the CNHH session on the same afternoon for the Website.

Dominique will soon cross post the blog she wrote for the Landon Pearson Center on Children’s Rights on the collection of Junior Red Cross Magazines she deposited there – which she had received from the Canadian Red Cross archives when they closed 10 years ago, via Sarah Glassford.

6. Other business