Hours: Tuesday to Friday 10:00am-12:00pm; 1:00pm-4:00 pm (Hours are subject to change, view hours of operation)
Location: J.N. Desmarais Library, 935 Ramsey Lake Road, Greater Sudbury, ON, Canada, P3E 2C6.
Contact: (705) 675-1151 x 3306; archives@laurentian.ca.
Access: Open to the public. An appointment is required to consult archival records.
Website: https://biblio.laurentian.ca/research/guides/archives#tab2
The Archives at Laurentian University, housed within the university library, has private collections and institutional records mostly related to Northern Ontario.
The archive houses the health-related fonds of Auxiliaire de l’Hôpital Laurentien (1950-2001), a volunteer group that provided services and equipment to the hospital, and the Sudbury History of Nursing Group (1997-2009) with textual and audio records related to the history of nursing in Northern Ontario. Health related records could be found in some of the personal papers collections, such as the papers of Floyd Laughren (1971-1998) that discusses hospital services. There are records related to social services amongst the fonds of the IODE: Elizabeth Fry Chapter (1935-1997) that includes records about genetic testing clinics, the Housing Resource Centre (1986-1999) that promoted affordable housing and tenants’ rights, the Women’s Legal Education Action Fund (LEAF) (1985-2003) that supported women’s rights, and Handicap-4 de Vallée-Est (1981-1993) that advocated for the well-being of disabled persons in the region.
The university also has records of social groups such as the Sudbury and District Historical Society (1909-1991) and the University Women’s Club (1948-2005). There are records of cultural and ethnic groups, furthermore, such as fonds on Finnish migrants like Oiva W. Saarinen (1920-2000) and Finnish organizations like the 2.33 m of textual records of the Finnish National Society of Sudbury (1930-1985).
There are political collections of note in this archive, such as the papers of the Socialist Party of Canada: Local 33 (1911-1927). There are also some labour collections that may be of interest, such as the fonds of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation (1920-1969) and those of the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen: Local 187 (1902-1992).
The library’s website offers a thematic list of fonds available in the archive.