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University of Calgary Archives completes three ASA-funded projects
Lisa Atkinson, Archival Program Manager, University of Calgary Archives
The University of Calgary Archives recently completed three projects funded by the ASA Access to Holdings program and by ASA's ANA grants. The projects included the arrangement and description of the Dr. Thomas Flanagan fonds, the digitization of a Chipewyan-English dictionary, and the completion of 121 new fonds-level descriptions.
The acquisition of Dr. Thomas Flanagan's papers was actively pursued by the University Archives. The fonds is unusual in that it bridges both arms of our mandate to collect private records: it reflects the scholarly work of an active and well-respected member of the academic staff at the university, and it falls within the Archives' recently expanded mandate to acquire records pertaining to populist parties in Western Canada.
Dr. Flanagan joined the academic staff of the University of Calgary in 1968 as an assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and served as head of department from 1982-1987 and as Academic Policy Advisor to the President from 1988-1990. Dr. Flanagan has spent much of his academic career studying and writing about Louis Riel and the Metis, and was a sub-editor for the Riel Project, a multi-year research endeavour which resulted in the publication of the collected writings of Louis Riel for the centennial of Riel's death in 1985. Other major topics of research have included native affairs, the Canadian electoral system, the Canadian Constitution, human rights and discrimination, and game theory as it applies to Canadian politics.
In 1990 Dr. Flanagan joined the Reform Party of Canada. He was hired as Director of Policy, Strategy and Communications in May 1991. He left the Party bureaucracy in 1993 after voicing strong objections to the hiring of Rick Anderson, a former Liberal Party campaign organiser, as director of Reform's federal election campaign. Flanagan again became actively involved behind-the-scenes in national politics as manager of Stephen Harper's successful campaigns for the leadership of the Canadian Alliance Party of Canada in 2001-2002 and in 2004 for the leadership of the newly created Conservative Party of Canada.
The fonds contains records that reflect all of these activities pursued by Dr. Flanagan. There are minutes, correspondence and grant applications relating to the administration of the Riel Project; copies of original records published through the Riel Project; book and scholarly article manuscripts, research notes and copies of records consulted during the research process; book reviews and manuscript assessments written by Flanagan about others' work, and by others about Flanagan's numerous books and articles; records relating to his consulting activities, particularly those relating to native land claims; and records pertaining to his various political activities.
The fonds is rich in content for researchers interested in any of the subjects Dr. Flanagan has written about, and for those curious about the management of a campaign to elect a national political leader, or the inner workings of a political party. The finding aid for Dr. Flanagan's records will soon be made available on the University Archives' "Private Papers" webpage located at http://www.ucalgary.ca/archives/researchholdings.html.
This project was supported by a grant from the Alberta Lotteries through the Archives Society of Alberta.
The second project the University Archives has completed in the past year is the digitization of Dr. Eung-Do Cook's Chipewyan-English dictionary. Dr. Cook is a native of Seosan, Chung-Nam Province, Korea and an emeritus professor of Linguistics at the University of Calgary. He joined the academic staff at the University of Calgary as an Assistant Professor of Linguistics in 1969 after receiving his training in Korea, Hawaii and the University of Alberta. Building on the work of Edward Sapir, Father Morice, and Fang-Kuei Li, Dr. Cook compiled a large amount of raw data on First Nations languages -- Chipewyan (Dene Suline) and Chilcotin in particular.
The papers Dr. Cook donated to the University Archives document his work on native North American languages, including the development of various orthographies or dictionaries of Athapaskan languages which have been in decline for the past half-century. These word lists are extremely valuable to native groups wishing to promote the use of the languages, and to linguists studying the languages. The digitized cards are available online via the fonds description for Dr. Cook's papers located at: http://www.ucalgary.ca/archives/eCook.html.
The new site immediately elicited excited responses from linguists at the UofC and the UofA and we have received requests for permission to provide links to our site. We hope in the near future to enhance this site by including the Chipewyan alphabet and related sound files for each of the letters. We will soon be adding a map indicating the geographical scope of the languages studied by Dr. Cook, as well as other information pertinent to the creation and use of the word list. This project was supported by an ANA grant through the Archives Society of Alberta.
The fonds-level description project involved research into the activities of 121 university units, individuals and other bodies whose records are held in the University Archives. After several years of neglecting to update our descriptions, a complete audit of the entries both on ANA and in our Gencat database was required. Many required updating, some required excising altogether due to the ever changing administrative structure of the University, and many new descriptions required researching and writing in their entirety. All of our descriptions, edited and new, have now been uploaded to the Archives Network of Alberta online database. This project was supported by an Archives Society of Alberta ANA grant.
The records of Dr. Bruce Hatfield: doctor, ethicist, and educator
Karen Buckley, University of Calgary Archives
The Dr. C. Bruce Hatfield fonds has recently been arranged and described under a grant from the Canadian Council of Archives. The fonds consists of 16.8 m of textual and audio-visual records, covering over sixty years in the life of a physician, writer, leader in medical ethics, advocate for palliative care, and public educator for issues ranging from the care of the terminally ill to human sexuality to bioethics.
Dr. Hatfield was born on 18 July 1926 in Calgary, Alberta where he received his early schooling. He graduated from the University of Alberta with a Bachelor of Science (1948), Master of Science (1951) and Medical Doctorate (1953). Postgraduate training and internships were spent at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and at the Hammersmith Hospital in London, England. Dr. Hatfield returned to Calgary in 1959 where he opened a private practice in general internal medicine in partnership with his brother Dr. Robert (Bob) Edgar Hatfield. Dr. Hatfield also joined the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary in 1970.
Dr. Hatfield became active as a supporter of family life and sex education for young adults in the 1960s. In 1967, he participated in the Committee on Family Life Education established by the Calgary Public School Board, and chaired a sub-committee investigating sex education at the elementary school level. In the early 1970s, Dr. Hatfield also surveyed the current sex education courses being offered by all provincial school divisions on behalf of the Alberta Division of the Canadian Medical Association. He gave numerous presentations and spoke to a wide variety of audiences on the topic, and also traveled to India in 1970 to present a paper on 'Sex Education: One Physician's View.' As an active member of the United Church of Canada, Dr. Hatfield was also deeply involved with the issues raised before, during, and after the publication of In God's Image…Male and Female - A Study in Human Sexuality by the United Church in the 1980s.
Throughout his career, Dr. Hatfield has been a strong proponent in the field of biomedical ethics. He chaired the Alberta Medical Association's Committee on Ethics for ten years, and was a member of the Canadian Medical Association's Ethics Committee. Dr. Hatfield was instrumental in creating the Ethics Consultation Service at the Foothills Hospital, a body of professionals created to provide consultation to physicians, hospital staff, patients, and families in the area of bioethical questions, issues, and decisions. Dr. Hatfield also served on the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies from 1989 to 1991. The Commission considered the social, ethical, health, research, legal, and economic implications of the medical and scientific developments in reproductive technologies.
As a dedicated advocate promoting better treatment of the dying, Dr. Hatfield worked as a tireless educator on the subjects of grief, death and dying, and palliative care. He co-authored two books with his brother Dr. Bob Hatfield: Matters of Life and Death and Treat Me Right! In recognition for their work, the Drs. Hatfield were presented with the Alberta Achievement Award and the Premier's Cup for Excellence in Medicine and the Community for their work with the terminally ill.
The final Series of the fonds is indicative of the wide-ranging and challenging interests that Dr. Hatfield was closely involved in throughout his professional career. Dr. Hatfield collected newspaper clippings and articles on topics that reflect a miniature cross-section of the 'hot-button' social, medical, and ethical issues of his lifetime. These issues include abortion, birth control and family planning, Aids, death and dying, euthanasia, genetics and genetic manipulation, sexuality and sex education, palliative care, and Medicare. Dr. Hatfield retired from medical practice and from the Faculty of Medicine in the mid-1990s. He is married with four daughters, and is currently living in Calgary. This project was made possible by financial assistance from the Government of Canada through the National Archives of Canada and the Canadian Council of Archives.
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