Today I have the pleasure of sharing an interview with Rodney Carter, Archivist for the St. Joseph Region of the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph.
The RHSJs are a congregation of Catholic women religious, which was founded in France in 1636 with the goals of establishing a hospital in the town of La Flèche and of founding a colony in New France on the Island of Montreal and establishing a hospital there.
The St. Joseph Region Archives are located at the Hotel Dieu Hospital in Kingston, Ontario, which was founded by the RHSJs in 1845.
1. Can you tell us a bit about the St. Joseph Region Archives of the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph?
The St. Joseph Region Archives of the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph hold the archival records of the Congregation’s administration, their institutions (including hospitals, old-age homes/long-term care facilities, schools, and orphanages), and the personal records of the Sisters of the St. Joseph Region of the RHSJs, which is comprised primarily of the English foundations of the Congregation. The archives holds the records, as well as some artifacts and a reference library, of foundations in Ontario (Kingston, Cornwall, St. Catharines, and Windsor), as well as from Miramichi, New Brunswick; three American states (Illinois, Wisconsin, Montana); and missions in Alberta and the Dominican Republic. It is a small archives but one which contains a rich history.
2. How long have you worked there and how did you become interested in the field?
I’ve been working here since 2004 – right out of my Master’s program at the University of Toronto. I became interested in archives after studying the history of photography with Joan Schwartz while doing my undergrad at Queen’s University. She was formerly a photo archivist at the National Archives of Canada (now LAC).
3. What are your current duties and projects?
As the sole staff member I am responsible for every aspect of the administration of the archives – including reference (primarily for the Congregation but I get some outside research requests as well), arrangement and description, etc.
In addition to on-going backlog reduction, I am working on processing recently acquired records from the hospitals and local community that was in Cornwall, Ont., and I just completed a series of displays for the Gallery of the St. Joseph’s School of Nursing, Hotel Dieu Hospital, Kingston Alumnae for their annual Reunion weekend.
4. Can you share more about one of your favourite items?
One of my new favourite pieces is from a rather atypical fonds in my collection: the fonds of Maria Varney, who was a seamstress at the Hospital in Kingston, whose records are mostly in Hungarian. I am not really sure why the former Archivist decided to acquire it as we do not usually keep staff records (even medical staff). When I was processing the collection I removed what I thought was a photographic portrait from an old frame. Once out of the frame I noticed it has a small hole in the centre, which I thought was odd, and, upon closer inspection I found it had a ring of grooves on it. It was a picture disc! I put it on a turntable and was able to digitize the minute or so of speech recorded on it and then reached out to colleagues who knew Hungarian to translate it for me. They let me know the voices of a man, a woman, and a child were wishing Maria a Happy Name Day. It is quite a unique item.
Thank you, Rodney Carter!
I hope you enjoyed learning about the RHSJs and the work of an archivist in a religious institution. If you have suggestions of archives/archivists that I should contact for future interviews, please let me know in the comments.