Multicultural History Society of Ontario

Hours: By appointment
Location: Room 283 – York Lanes, Keele Campus, York University, 4700 Keel Street, Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3
Contact: 416-650-8238; info@mhso.ca
Access: Contact archivist to book an appointment. A list of Finding Aids should be consulted before visiting.
Website Address: http://mhso.ca/wp/

The Multicultural History Society of Ontario (MHSO) archives houses the most extensive collection of archival materials documenting immigrant and ethnic experiences in Canada. Over 50 ethno-cultural communities and First Nations and some 240 municipalities are represented in the MHSO’s archival holdings. There is no other comparable grouping of primary sources in Canada, particularly in its emphasis on post-World War II migration history.

Textual records related to migration and ethnicity within the MSHO holdings includes the collections of 55 ethno-cultural communities. The majority of these records- 170 metres and 1,446 microfilm– are housed at the Archives of Ontario (AO) in a collection identified as the fonds of the Multicultural History Society of Ontario (c. 1890-1989).  This collection is composed of personal papers, 84,000 photographs, documents, scrapbooks, and unpublished diaries and memoirs, as well as the records of cultural organizations, social clubs, religious institutions, relief and mutual aid societies, benevolent associations, labour groups, and nationalist and political organizations. The collection includes notable records from the Armenian Georgetown Boys, Greek communal schools, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, the Sudbury Finnish Canadian Historical Society (18.5 metres and 35 microfilm reels) COSTI or Centro Organizzativo Scuole Tecniche Italiane (15.3 metres of textual records) and records from various Mennonite churches. Housed within its own archives are additional migration records including Chinese Head Tax certificates and documents related to Caribana.

The MHSO’s oral testimony collection is one of the largest oral testimony collections in North America and is composed of over 5, 300 oral history interviews. The majority of the interviews were conducted during the 1970s and 1980s and include the testimony of Ukrainian displaced persons (post-WWII), former soldiers of the Polish Second Army Corps (1946), family-sponsored Italians, Finns in the mining and lumber towns of northern Ontario, Hungarian refugees in the wake of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, American war resisters and draft dodgers during the Vietnam War, Irish immigrants in Ontario (1960s), South Asian immigrants (1970s), and Vietnamese ‘boat people’ (1979-1980). More recent additions to the collection include interviews conducted as part of the Agincourt: A Community History, Memorial 1956 – The Hungarian Exodus, and Chinese Canadian Women 1923-1967 initiatives. The MHSO has also interviewed a number of individuals who were former interviewers and also house their collections.

Also notable is the MHSO Archives’ ethnic newspaper collection (19^th-20^th c. papers). Hardcopies of over 610 newspapers from 45 ethno-cultural communities are available and comprise the core collection. There is also an extensive collection of over 330 microfilmed newspapers from 45 ethno-cultural communities, including the Chinese Shing Wah Yat Po, Hungarian Uj Szo, Italian Il Giornale di Toronto, Japanese Tairiku Jiho (Continental Times), and South Asian Canadian India Times. In addition, the MSHO historical photograph collection represents over 50 ethno-cultural communities and is comprised of 60, 000 photographs including original prints, copy and contact prints, photocopies, slides, and original and copy negatives. They depict individuals and family life, migration, ethnic neighborhoods, enterprises, work in occupational niches, religious celebrations, sports and recreational activities, entertainment, and associational culture from the late 19^th century to 1980.

Digitized collections include interviews and newspapers from the Society’s Strangers No More: Immigrant History and Multicultural Canada initiative. This collection, entitled Discovering Multicultural Canada includes 2,525 oral history tapes (1,715 interviews), 6,671 historical photographs from the MHSO photographs collection and over 650,000 newspaper pages from its ethnic newspapers collection. Other collections include Connecting Canadians: Canada’s Multicultural Newspapers, a digitized collection of ethnic newspapers by The MHSO, Simon Fraser University, the Galileo Educational Network and Athabasca University. The online collection includes Croatian, Estonian (Meie Elu, Vaba Eestlane), Finnish (Canadan Uutiset, Liekki, and Vapaus), Hungarian, Latvian (Brivais Latvietis), Lithuanian (Liaudies Balsas), Polish, Serbian, Serbo-Croatian, and Ukrainian newspapers.