Black Diasporas Tkaronto-Toronto
Explore our latest exhibition.
Open Wednesday to Saturday, 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.
A Panel Discussion on Community Histories in Institutional Archives
A Place for Community Archiving
As a part of Museum of Toronto’s Black Diasporas Tkaronto-Toronto exhibition, this unique panel will explore the growing importance of community archivism in our city.
We are gathering field experts from initiatives such as Mapping Ontario’s Black Archives (MOBA), the Portuguese Canadian History Project, and Chinese Canadian Archives to describe the efforts, ethics, and challenges in preserving local histories, while simultaneously working in institutional archival settings.
This cross-cultural, cross-institutional conversation will explore questions such as:
- Who has the resources and rights to collect these histories?
- Are there ethical as well as moral issues with collecting people’s oral narratives?
- What might we understand between archival expertise and lived expertise?
WHEN
Thursday, January 30th, 2025 6pm-8pm
TICKETS
Admission is free, donations are encouraged.
Register below.
LOCATION
401 Richmond Street West
Eastern Entrance
Meet the Panel
June Chow 周慕慈
June Chow 周慕慈 (she/her) is a formally trained archivist practicing across Chinese Canadian communities and specializing in Chinatowns. In Toronto, she is a special collections archivist with the Chinese Canadian Archives at University of Toronto Libraries. In Vancouver, she is community archivist of The Paper Trail to the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act, working through a reparative lens with Chinese immigration records held within families and at our national archives. Her mother and aunt’s sharing of oral histories related to their grandfather’s life in Canada as a “Chinese bachelor” led to the recovery of his long-lost grave in Saskatoon. June and her family are Cantonese-speaking, uninvited guests and settlers of Turtle Island.
Dr. Cheryl Thompson
Gilberto Fernandes
Gilberto Fernandes is a visiting scholar and instructor in the Department of History at York University. He is the author of This Pilgrim Nation: The Making of the Portuguese Diaspora in North America (2020) and several other academic publications on the history of the Portuguese diaspora, and of Ontario’s construction industry and its building trade unions. Gilberto is also an award-winning public historian with several credits, including community archives, documentaries, exhibitions, websites, podcasts, walking tours, and theatre, which he developed in collaboration with university archives, museums, embassies, trade unions, social service agencies, and other organizations. Most notably, he is the lead director of the Portuguese Canadian History Project, which he co-founded in 2008.
How to Find Us
Intersections
Find the 401 Richmond on Richmond Street West between Spadina Avenue and Peter Street.
The Building
Find our gallery space at the Eastern Entrance of the building, next to the Spacing Store. This entrance is wheelchair accessible.
The 401 Richmond Building is a bustling hub, we invite you to explore after your time at Museum of Toronto!
Explore More
Content
Derailed: The History of Black Railway Porters in Canada
All aboard! This multimedia digital exhibition produced by Museum of Toronto in collaboration with author/scholar Cecil Foster.