Minute books, account books, and membership book for the New Attempt Temperance Society, one of the earliest Finnish organizations in Port Arthur.
Records relate to the work of business and industrial development and policy throughout Northwestern Ontario.
The role of the Northwestern Ontario Development Association / Northwestern Ontario Development Council was to support and promote business and industrial development across the Northwestern Ontario region. This involved supporting individual businesses and entrepreneurs; organizing and carrying out research on existing and potential industries and availability of services in the region; facilitating the flow of information between governments, researchers, existing businesses and prospective businesses; and advocating for the needs of Northwestern Ontario to multiple levels of government. Transportation, utilities, and financial incentives are recurring themes; mining, forestry, manufacturing, agriculture, tourism, and more are also heavily reflected in the records.
These records reflect the work of Alexander Phillips as General Manager of NODA/NODC, and include correspondence with municipalities, government, business leaders, entrepreneurs, colleagues in other regions, and others, and cover a wide variety of subjects. The division of records into series reflects how they were initially kept and filed by NODA; searching within the collection will be valuable to researchers as files related to a particular subject may be found in multiple locations.
Phillips' own files are also integrated into this collection, and so records reflecting his work with the Quetico Provincial Park Advisory Committee, the Mississippi River Parkway Commission, and various other organizations can also be found within the collection. There is additionally a small amount of personal material.
Northwestern Ontario Development AssociationThe 1978 Young Canada Works "Herstory" project's aim was to compile material on women pioneers in Northwestern Ontario with the intention of using the material to write a book on the same theme. The hope was to illustrate the lives and achievements of Northwestern Ontario women and stimulate further interest in women's contribution to Northwestern Ontario history.
The material here was collected through interviews with over 100 women around Northwestern Ontario. Records include 70 audio cassettes with taped interviews, recorded largely in 1975, and mostly accompanied by transcripts. The records also contain research notes, news articles and photographs, related to Northwestern Ontario communities and fields of activity relating to women's history. They also include correspondence, reports, financial and other administrative records of the project leaders and workers.
The project work did not continue through to the writing of a book. These records were held but largely untouched until a project review in 1993.
In the Decade Council's 1993 report, three objectives were listed: To validate women’s contributions within the context of NWO; to restore and catalogue the records of women’s lives in NWO; and to create a resource that would provide a perspective on women’s Herstory in NWO. A detailed summary of those interviewed, their location and details on whether there is a transcript or release form were created. This report concluded with multiple recommendations with the aim of preserving the tapes and collected materials for eventual public use. This project was not continued, and the material was stored in various locations until its donation in 2024.
Photographs are divided into seven subseries:
A - Architecture
B - Arts (Theatre, music, dance, arts, crafts)
C - Business & industry
D - Churches
E - Communities in Northwestern Ontario
F - People, families, & genealogy
G - Organizations
Documents, correspondence, and collective agreements with the Port Arthur Shipbuilding Company, in Port Arthur / Thunder Bay.
Consists of minute books, account books, and membership of the Workingmen's Association, including executive, entertainment committee, and sickness and funeral relief fund.
Photographs of Bertrand's travels in Northwestern Ontario and Northern Minnesota, probably 1940s and 1950s. Includes Kakabeka Falls, the Port Arthur Waterfront, and several reproductions of unidentified older portrait photographs.
Most subjects are not identified in any way.
Photographic prints; negatives are also described as #13d.
The collection consists of legal files and documents, correspondence, newspaper clippings, and drawings from the legal firm Wink & Cameron (Port Arthur). The collection consists of the following series:
Records of Reverend Toivo Johannes Pajala (1903-1972), minister of Saalem Pentecostal Church.
Toivo Pajala was born Dec 31, 1903, in Vimpeli, Finland. His family was Lutheran, with some ties to the Pentecostal Church. Pajala migrated to Canada at age 19, and was in Port Arthur at least by 1923. For many years he made a living as a bushworker.
Religion became an important part of Pajala's life: he became Laestadian, then Pentecostal. He attended the Western Bible College in Winnipeg for two years, and then was ordained in 1946 in Toronto. He married his wife Sylvia in 1949 shortly before returning to Port Arthur.
From 1949 to 1963, Pajala was pastor of Saalem Finnish Pentecostal Church in Port Arthur. In 1951, he established a Finnish-language Pentecostal radio program on CKPR, particularly reaching bushworkers and others in rural areas, and people unable to leave their homes. He was also well known for supporting immigrants to the region, and providing funeral services when others would not.
Pajala spent 1963-1967 as a pastor in Waukegan, Illinois. After 1967, he officially retired, and returned to Port Arthur, where he was still active in the church. His death was in 1972.
Most of the records in this fonds relate to either Pajala's religious education in the 1940s (organized by class or by notebook) or the sermons he gave in Finnish or English, in Port Arthur and by radio (organized loosely by theme.)
The last few files of the fonds relate to a project after Pajala’s death: to interview those who knew him and memorialize him. The book “Kansanpappi Toivo Pajala,” written by Tellervo Kähärä and available in the Library, is a result of that work.
Pajala, ToivoRecording of an oral history conducted with Rose Allard (1909?-2002) by her daughter Sandra Allard, beginning December 16, 1981. Rose Allard was the child of Italian immigrants to Northwestern Ontario. In these interviews she speaks about her family, childhood, and life in Port Arthur and in Beardmore.
Viljo Rosvall and Janne Voutilainen, while working to organize lumber workers with the Lumber Workers Industrial Union of Canada (LWIUC) at Onion Lake, disappeared in November 1929 and were later found dead. These deaths have been contested: many believe that they were killed for their work in the labour movement, while the official inquest stated their deaths were accidental and due to drowning.
This collection of records includes academic and popular articles related to the deaths of Rosvall and Voutilainen, and materials related to their grave site and memorials. The most significant item here is an affidavit made by Arthur Alanko to Ernie Epp and Paul Pugh: he states that while visiting Finland in 1990 he was given information about men who had killed Rosvall and Voutilainen and then returned to Finland. This information is new to the story as generally understood and told as part of Thunder Bay's popularly understood history.
Epp, A. ErnestAccount books and minute books of the Finnish Building Company, an organization formed in 1909 to raise funds for the construction of the Finnish Labour Temple (Big Finn Hall) at 314 Bay Street.
Minute books, account books, and membership books for the Port Arthur Finnish Socialists Local. Includes records of the sewing society, entertainment committee, and theatrical society.
A vast and varied collection of records documenting the experiences of Finnish immigrants to Northwestern Ontario. Includes correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, interviews, published material, and ephemera. The photograph collection is extensive and covers a wide range of subjects.
The records are arranged into the following series:
A - Bay Street Project
B - Finnpraxis Project
C - Collections
D - Photographs
E - Miscellaneous
F - Finnish Experience
Photographs and documents, generally collected because they would be of interest regarding the history of Port Arthur and Fort William. Includes rail and CPR, ships, fishing, and social and sporting groups.