Brock safeguards Review, Standard archive collection

‘It’s a veritable treasure trove,’ says university librarian Mark Robertson

The history of Niagara as recorded by the journalists and photographers at the St. Catharines Standard and the Niagara Falls Review has a new home.

The newspapers’ archive files — decades of clippings of stories, notes, photos and microfilm used by reporters when researching stories — have been donated to Brock University’s library and for the first time will be available to the public.

“The collection I know will be an enormous boon to students and researchers,” university librarian Mark Robertson said during an event to mark the donation Tuesday in the library’s archives and special collections department.

“It’s a veritable treasure trove,” he added.

The collection spans from 1915 to the early 2000s and includes all aspects of Niagara life, including royal visits, sports championships, school openings, business expansions, councils and courts and triumphs and tragedies.

“These are not clippings. These are not photographs,” said Dana Robbins, vice-president of content, community and operations for Metroland Media, a division of Torstar, which owns The Standard and The Review. “This is the memory of

the people who have lived in this community for decades, for more than 100 years. Some of those milestones have been momentous, maybe a few even life-altering, but more often they’ve been prosaic and commonplace, maybe a handful of frivolous and fun — but taken in their entirely, the grist of human lives lived.”

When the company closed the papers’ physical offices in 2021, there was a question of what would happen to the filing cabinets stuffed with local history.

Brock University was contacted to see if it would be interested in having the records and jumped on board in what was a mutually beneficial donation.

“A newspaper’s archives, such as those collected by The Standard and Review, are the cumulative result of decades of hard work, skill and so much more,” said Angus Scott, editor-inchief of The Standard and Review.

“They represent the professional lives of scores of journalists who lived and worked in Niagara and who documented its story. It’s good to know those records are in the safe hands of the professional archivists at Brock University, who will not only preserve them for future posterity but also make them widely available to students, researchers and the general public.”

The massive collection of files was donated in February 2022 and consisted of 263 bankers boxes, a resource Brock said measured more than 120 metres in length.

It was valued at $1.22 million and was one of the largest inkind donations to Brock in 2022.

“We are proud to chronicle Niagara’s story and we’re proud that these archives are going to an institution as illustrious as Brock University but, perhaps more importantly, an institution that we know values the history of the community and is committed to safeguarding it,” Robbins said.

“That means a tremendous amount to us.”

Lesley Rigg, university president and vice-chancellor, said having the materials is a natural fit for Brock. She said universities and the media have a deep dedication to knowledge preservation and to the dissemination of knowledge, truth and understanding.

She called the collection a “tremendously important” gift to Brock and one that will be cared for deeply.

“What we have to do is understand our community, where it’s been, where it’s going, and, to do that, you first need to understand all the individuals’ stories. The people who make up our community. What they’ve lived through. Their struggles. Their hopes. Their failures. Their triumphs. And I think we see it all represented in the materials in front of us here,” she said.

“This community is extremely fortunate to be served by a talented team of journalists at both the St. Catharines Standard and Niagara Falls Review. You’ve been telling their stories for decades and for longer and I think the importance of that is not lost on us and the responsibility that we feel as an institution to preserve those memories.”

Library staff have been completing an inventory of the material and are creating a finding aid, a task that is expected to take years to complete.

The materials are being preserved and made available to anyone who needs access.

David Sharron, head of archives and special collections, said 35 per cent of users of the special collections are from the Niagara community or beyond, not just Brock university staff and students.

Anyone can visit during open hours 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday to Friday. Because the Standard and Review collection is new, large and still being chronicled, and classes are sometimes held in the special collections room, he suggested visitors make an appointment ahead of time by emailing archives@brocku.ca.