As the second term of ASTU has come around, we have begun to look more closely at archives and how can tell their own sort of life narratives. I never realized what archives really were until we started to work with them. However, after seeing all of the history in one room, and getting to actually hold some of the work done by Jack Shadbolt, it finally hit me how incredibly real it all was.
I have always been drawn to the precious items that document snippets of people’s lives throughout history. How something has withstood the test of time and is living on to continue to make memories will never seize to amaze me. Hearing old family stories at the dinner table, seeing love letters that traveled from one soldier to his love back home in America, finding old newspapers in old abandoned houses. Each story shares something new, is a different piece of history in this never ending circle of life. So, it came as no surprise when I started to make my own family tree as part of a school project in the 7th grade.
Over the course of a month, I gathered information and articles from both side of the family. Digging through old boxes in my grandparent’s attic, searching through town records to try and connect missing links, even making calls to family members all the way across the Atlantic. I started to compile some of my data onto ancestry.com. I got up to 3 generations through my work, and learned a great deal about my family history in the process.
As we were reading Diamond Grill, I kept thinking how Fred’s book itself is like a family tree. Each person in his book has some sort of story to tell, and in turn they intertwine themselves in the lives of both Fred’s family at the café, and his family at home. As I was going back to look at my family tree that I had made all those years ago, I couldn’t help but see all the stories that I have to go along with all of my family members. With the digital file, the map of the family ancestry is there. We can look back in time and see our great great great great great grandparents, while with the work of archivists and narratives like Fred’s, people get tot see the bigger picture. We get to live along with the authors of each memory, walk in their shoes, if only for a few words at a time.
I think that both types of archiving is useful, however in different situations. The archives available to us in places such as the Rare Books and Special Collections library here at UBC, provide a unique experience allowing us to physically hold, say, a journal relaying the events a certain day back 50 years ago. While there is nothing really that can compare to that, the ability to trace family ancestry online is still a great start to delving into the fascinating history of the world around you.