The King's Connection Magazine Volume 24 // Number 1 | Page 16

FEATURED ARTICLE

Collecting stories,
creating a tie that binds.
NEW ARCHIVE AT KING’S

By Kealy Litun, Marketing Coordinator

H

uddled around a photograph taken in Edmonton at one
of the popular Dutch Evenings, onlookers chat excitedly
while pointing to their friends and loved ones, some long
passed. The photo, a black and white group shot, transported
the guests visiting the Gerry Segger Heritage Collection right
back to 1952, the memory of the evening vivid and lively.
For the Heritage Collection team that includes Associate
Professor of History DR. WILL VAN ARRAGON and Senior
Library Technician BONITA BJORNSON, sharing in the
memory of the evening and learning from guests from
Emmanuel Home, a retirement community in Edmonton,
Alberta, who were in attendance is part of the joy and
pleasure of starting to build the collection.
“It is a gift to have people willing to share their personal
documents and stories with us,” says Bjornson. “I have grown
to better understand my parents and the lives of other Dutch
immigrants through hearing stories and seeing the items
donated to the collection.”
With the archive in its infancy, the Gerry Segger Heritage
Collection team is gathering primary source documents—
passports, letters, postcards, and pictures—that tell the
stories of Dutch Canadians, most of them from a Reformed
background, who immigrated to Canada and made a life
in a new country.
Why would an archive want to collect letters, postcards and
other personal papers? For many, these documents, while
close to the heart to some, may seem inconsequential. As
they are one-of-a-kind, first-hand accounts of a period in
time, though, these documents are like gold for historians.
Primary sources allow historians to utilize the archive to build
historical narratives about an event or time—in other words,
they are a portal into a bygone era, a time that is past. The
Heritage Collection, while open to the general public, will be
accessed primarily by academic historians, King’s students
and genealogists. It will fill a niche for academic historians
interested in studying the Dutch-Canadian immigrant
experience, an area of study that Dr. Van Arragon says is
currently under-examined. Additionally, King’s students

14 /// The King’s Connection /// Summer 2014

will be able to utilize the archive to complete
undergraduate research projects. Access to primary sources
for undergraduate research is uncommon i