World War Two Scrapbook, Windsor, Ontario

On November 11th, 2013 a wonderful biographical scrapbook about persons from Essex county who served in World War Two was published on the web. The scrapbook belongs to The R.C. Diocese Of London (Ontario), specifically to Our Lady of the Rosary in Windsor, Ontario. At this point, it is not known who created it.

The scrapbook is extremely fragile, being comprised of highly acidic papers, inks and adhesives and for the same reason, light sensitive. After careful consideration, it was decided to create a digital file which could be displayed on the internet.

I can’t say enough about the generosity of the congregation of Our Lady of the Rosary in publishing this treasure. All things considered, they did the right thing by sharing digitally, instead of the old way through an exhibition which was often so damaging and which only provided limited access anyway. Because of its nature, the scrapbook is threatened by thousands of hands turning pages to seek information. This may now be avoided.

However, the publication of the scrapbook on the web has precipitated the usual cascade of truly stupid comments. Among them are rants against archives for failing to measure up against a parish church.

These critics need to imagine a space the size of the ground floor of their home, filled top to bottom with shelving containing hundreds of boxes of papers. Many of these papers will not be organized in a roughly alphabetical order (like the Scrapbook). Nor will it be obvious what much of the papers are actually about. The records await the archivist to sort them out and make a finding aid. But wait! The archivist must spend five out of six hours a day helping the general public with enquiries and other duties.

Yes, it is true that every Ontario archive has some trusted volunteers willing to pitch in. However, these people have their own research interests and lives outside of the archives. Faced by the reality of how long it actually takes to do a good job on a foot of original records they usually finish the assignment and then say, “There you go, but no more of that please. Let me do something else.”

I for one am tired of being cast as a villain. Our archives are choc-a-bloc with wonderful collections. If Ontarians want to see these things up online like the Our Lady of the Rosary Scrapbook, then we need to lobby governments to provide help to get the professionals out of the reading room and into the storage to arrange, catalogue and digitize as they are educated to do.

The World War Two Scrapbook belonging to Our Lady of the Rosary can be viewed at http://wp.dol.ca/webportal/diocese/content/1/5/WWII%20Virtual%20Exhibit/810

The Sons of St. Crispin

A cobbler at work in his shop, May, 1907.

In the 19th century, every Ontario village had a shoemaker, sometimes more than one.  These men were also known as cordwainers, although some sources say that only men who made more luxurious footwear out of softest leather truly deserved the name.  In contrast, cobblers were men who repaired boots and shoes, but did not make them.  As time passed, the distinction between shoemaker and cobbler became blurred as one man often performed both functions.

It does not take much imagination to perceive the autonomy which shoemakers enjoyed.  They were masters of their own small shops and could decide their own hours.  They could take on apprentices and get paid for the privilege.  They knew everyone in their village and most of the farmers thereabouts.   Conversation during a visit to the shoemaker was not limited to shoes, so they understood much about the politics and economy of the community.

In the 1860’s all this began to change.  Better transportation, in particular, the railways, permitted centralized manufacture of footwear on a large scale in cities such as Toronto, Hamilton and Montreal.  Newly patented machines made it possible to mechanize most of the process.  Village shoemakers could not compete with mass manufacturer.  At first, many of the employees in the factories were men who had been village shoemakers but had moved to the city.  The regular wages offered seemed appealing in contrast to the struggle to survive in a village shop with a declining number of customers.  However, city workers experienced a sense of loss — loss of autonomy and loss of control of their working days as well as loss of respect.  Moreover, it was not long before manufacturers found that they could hire semi-skilled labourers to operate the machines.  These were known as “green hands” to the older shoemakers and much resented by men raised in the apprentice-journeyman system.  Manufacturers also hired women, because they would work for lower wages.

In the northeastern United States in the 1870’s, the Knights of St. Crispin became one of the first large scale labour unions.  (St. Crispin is the patron saint of shoemakers.)   Although they described their occupation as a quiet and gentle craft, the shoemakers believed that strong opposition was required if they were not to be pushed out of their own trade.  Among other demands, the Knights of St. Crispin argued that shoemakers should be permitted to remain in the villages and work and not forced to move into cities although it was not clear how this could be accompished.   After the rise and fall of the Knights, other organizations representing shoe workers appeared, including the Boot and Shoe Makers Union which was very vigorous in Ontario.  In Toronto, female shoe workers lead their male colleagues into a mass strike in the 1880’s.  The issue was the right of female workers to unionize and the right of equal pay.  When the Toronto shoe industry began to loose out to factories in Montreal, of course the union was blamed, although the reasons were actually not quite so simple.

The elderly cobbler in the photograph is still working in his own shop.  At  right a window provides a glimpse of an unpaved road and the business across the street.  However, on the wall a prominent card (shield-shaped, upper right) announces that he is a member of the Boot and Shoe Makers Union.  The movement born on the factory floor has moved beyond the city and been embraced by local entrepreneurs.

Photograph from the collections of the Lennox and Addington Historical Society, Lennox and Addington County Museum and Archives.