Our Advisory Group member, Professor Dominique Marshall, has recently notified us that with the assistance of Dr Sarah Glassford, historian of the Canadian Red Cross, selected materials from the Canadian Red Cross archives have now been deposited in the Archives and Special Collections of Carleton University’s MacOdrum Library (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada).
The collection consists of materials that were previously at the CRC main office and which neither the national archives nor the local societies or the Canadian War Museum wanted; mainly because they did not directly concern Canada. Carleton’s collection now contains most of the CRC archives’ material relating to the International Committee of the Red Cross, the 7 fundamental principles of the Red Cross, the Red Cross movement broadly, and international humanitarian law. There are also many publications used in the education of Canadian children, and wonderful ICRC pictures circulated before the internet.
Professor Marshall, History Professor at Carleton University, has started using these materials as teaching resources in her course on the history of humanitarian aid. As part of their course work, one of the six student teams interviewed two CRC veterans, Ted Itani and Conrad Sauvé, about the collection of Red Cross materials how housed at Carleton, and produced a physical display focusing on landmines for the Carleton archive, as well as designing and producing a digital exhibit.
Carleton staff have also sent to the Centre for Research Libraries all of the printed issues of the International Review of the Red Cross which they were missing, as the CRC was getting rid of its own collection.
You can read more about Sarah Glassford’s history of the Canadian Red Cross, Mobilizing Mercy, here. Dr Glassford is now Archivist & Librarian, Archives, Rare Books & Special Collections, University of Windsor.
Professor Dominique Marshall is also a member of the Canadian Network on Humanitarian History – a multidisciplinary group interested in the history of humanitarian aid in academia, archives and NGOs. The CNHH is conducting an operation of ‘Archival Rescue’ in collaboration with Carleton Archives and Special Collections’ staff (Chris Trainor (Head), Lloyd Keane (Archives and Rare Book Coordinator), and Hunter McGill (Senior Fellow, University of Ottawa).
For more information about the collection at Carleton University,
Pplease contact Professor Marshall:
dominique_marshall@carleton.ca
This article is cross-posted with permission from Resilient Humantarianism: The League of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 1919-1991.
