By Tom Adam
For close to 50 years, the Archives has enjoyed a collaborative partnership with Huron University College. How did it come to take up residence there and why is it leaving now?
Before the mid-1970’s, we did not have a designated space to house archival material for the Diocese of Huron. A Committee on Historical Records had been in existence since 1927; however all the important artifacts and papers remained the responsibility of individual parishes, scattered all across Southwestern Ontario.
In 1976, fearing the loss of our corporate history, the Reverend Dr. Douglas Leighton, clergyman, respected scholar and professor of history at Huron College, made arrangements to collect Diocesan archival material from far and wide and bring it together in the College library, simply to ensure its preservation and guarantee proper storage of the fragile and valuable materials. Subsequently, he began a campaign to create an official Diocesan Archives.
At Synod the following year the Archives was officially established and a collaborative partnership was forged with the College to provide space for it. All the collected documents, artifacts and records were housed in the Huron Library, where they remained for almost twenty years.
Then in 1994, the space at the College directly below the Chapel became available for conversion to a suitable repository for Diocesan archival material. Renovations to these rooms funded by the Diocese, furnished appropriate space to safely store our collections in a temperature- and humidity-stable environment. Space was also provided to efficiently process new accessions and to offer in-house archival services to our parishes across the Diocese.
That year the Verschoyle Phillip Cronyn Memorial Archives officially opened. Our efforts in creating the Archives and our contribution to the wider archival community were officially recognized by the Archives Association of Ontario in 1996 when the new Cronyn Archives was awarded the Association’s first Institutional Award.
The majority of our collection is housed on about 60 m2 (600 ft2) of high-density compact storage, a unit about 16 m. (50 ft) long that can be manually manipulated to move ranges of shelves along tracks permanently installed in the floor. Shifting the shelving carriages creates temporary aisle access into the collection that can be repositioned wherever is necessary.
Additional material and artifacts fill several flat storage map cabinets and static shelving along with cabinets for microfilmed records. Together these elements comprise our collections “Vault.” A public Reading Room and welcome area for in-house researchers, a work area for staff and volunteers to process new material and office space for the Diocesan Archivist complete the arrangement of rooms in the Cronyn Archives.
Recent growth and expansion at the College brought with it a severe lack of space. University Administration let us know in summer 2024 that our space was immediately needed for other purposes and our collaborative partnership necessarily would be terminated.
Realizing it would take time to get all the ducks in a row to find a new location, ready the space and orchestrate the actual move, we were able to negotiate extensions to our leasing arrangement until the end of August 2026, at which time we must return empty rooms to Huron. It sounded far-off, but given the complexity of the project ahead of us, we needed to get to it right away. Bishop Todd struck a small working group and we started our work in October 2024.
Find out more about the Archives Relocation Working Group and its rather circuitous road to selecting St Paul’s Cathedral as the Archives’ new home in the next issue of Huron Church News.
Tom Adam is Chair of the Archives Relocation Working Group.