New Concordia alumni archives collection documents student life through the ages
Group of Loyola College students, date unknown. | All photos courtesy of Concordia Archives
Katrina Goudreau-Weaver began rebuilding the Concordia University Alumni Archives Collection in June 2024 as part of an archival stage placement with l’École de bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l'information at the Université de Montréal.
Concordia’s 50th anniversary is a fitting time to look back on the university’s history. The Concordia University Alumni anf Friends Archives Collection at Records Management and Archives (RMA) aims to help make this task easier for the community. This collection will allow the university’s archivists to consolidate all materials donated by alumni from Concordia, Loyola College and Sir George Williams University, and more easily provide access and context for these materials.
Background and creating a new collection
Concordia was created through the merger of Loyola College and Sir George Williams University. The joining of these institutions was the result of years of discussions and allowed for the creation and establishment of Concordia, which welcomed its first students in 1974.
McGill rugby team photo matted, date unknown.
Context of the collection’s creation
Over the years, the Concordia Archives have preserved documents related to alumni and friends of the university and its founding institutions. Many of these items are obtained from private archival donations, whether from former students themselves or their descendants.
The earliest acquisition is from 1986 and the most recent in 2024. While some of the donations are substantial, many consist of only a couple of folders or documents. The archive decided to unite all these smaller donations: when placed together, they give a broader view of student life and its evolution through the 20th century. RMA chose 11 different donations initially, and they added a few more as the project moved along. These donations will serve as the foundation for this collection, which will grow as more content is identified and added by the archivists now and in the future.
The collection contains documents related to alumni from Loyola, Sir George Williams and Concordia and their friends. It focuses mainly on their activities while they were students. There is a wide variety of materials such as textual documents, photographs, negatives and objects.
The first step of the project was to identify some donations that would be best presented within the context of the collection. With each as separate donations, they show the academic and extra-curricular activities of the students. The second step was deciding the best way to identify each creator, which, in this case, means the person who compiled these documents.
Once that was completed, the RMA team began digitizing samples of items in the collection and uploading them to Concordia’s Internet Archive collection. This allows any user of the Internet Archive to browse the collection. The names of many of the students and faculty who were identified in the photos can also be found throughout many of the documents uploaded to the Internet Archive through a text-content search on the RMA web page.
Early days of Loyola College, date unknown.
Highlights from the collection
ACC-1987-03 (John Doherty Kearney): Sports Memorabilia and Conservation Documents
Loyola College alum John Doherty Kearney was very active in school activities, particularly athletics. His documents contain many pictures, as well as programs related to the activities he participated in, such as Loyola’s Annual Field Day, some dramatic productions and the Loyola Literary and Debating Society. Included in the archive are folders related to the conservation of his scrapbook, which arrived in bad condition. These documents detail the various treatments and methods used to restore and prevent further degradation.
ACC-2024-16 (Kenneth John Arthur): Charles E. Frosst Medal
One of the archives’ most recent additions was collected by Kenneth John Arthur. He graduated from Sir George Williams College in 1956 with a Bachelor of Commerce. At his graduation, he received the Charles E. Frosst Medal, awarded annually for outstanding merit in the Faculty of Commerce. The medal features the Sir George Williams College coat of arms. On the back, Arthur’s name is engraved with the award year. Recipients of the medal were also given a certificate and a patch featuring the coat of arms. The patch was hand-embroidered and beaded.
ACC-1988-01 (Harry Hyland): Loyola Hall of Fame Plaque
Harry M. Hyland was a professional hockey player, first in the National Hockey Association and, subsequently, in the National Hockey League during its first season. He was the first player to ever score a hat trick in NHL history and, in 1962, was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. While he was experiencing great success on the ice, he took the time to coach some of the early Loyola College hockey teams between 1912 and 1916. Two of the teams Hyland coached won the Canadian Junior Championship during this period. On May 21, 1969, Loyola inducted him into the Loyola Sports Hall of Fame and he was awarded a plaque to mark the occasion. The plaque is now part of this collection.
ACC-98-059 (John O’Neill Gallery): Printing Plate and Print
One of the most interesting items we encountered was a metal printing plate. It consists of a block of wood, on which a metal plate is mounted. The plate has a very blue colouration to it, producing a similar effect to a film negative. The metal printing plate was used to make prints of a photo, which is revealed by a closer look.
Concordia also has a print of this photo; both the print and the printing plate come from donations related to John O’Neill Gallery. Gallery, a Loyola alum, went on to attend McGill University after graduation. This photo is from the time he spent studying at McGill and shows the McGill Rugby team.
More alumni whose material make up the collection as of August 13:
- Chris Bonnet – Concordia University
- Donald Tobin – Loyola College
- Florence Steinberg Friedman – Sir George Williams
- Frank “Spike” Kelly – Loyola College
- Fred Kerner – Sir George Williams
- George Preville – Loyola College
- Jack Goodson – Sir George Williams
- James J. McGarry – Loyola College
- Louis “Luigi” Zardo – Loyola College
- Mari-Lin Smith Miller – Sir George Williams
- Milan Moravec – Sir George Williams
- Norman Manson – Sir George Williams
- Rytsa Helene Tobias – Sir George Williams
RMA works to preserve and make accessible documents related to Concordia’s history, as well as those of Loyola College and Sir George Williams University. The archive relies on donations to continue its work documenting the history of these three institutions.
If you believe you have items that fall in this category, we invite you to consult our Donating to archives web page. It outlines the different considerations when evaluating whether a donation can be accepted under RMA’s Policy on the Acquisition of Archives, as well as the steps to take if you believe your items qualify for preservation.
Find out more about Concordia’s 50th anniversary celebrations.
