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Solving the Mystery of Eph Thompson, The Elephant Trainer

Who was Eph Thompson? Ephraim “Eph” Thompson (1859 – 1909), a man once called the greatest elephant trainer in the world, was born in Colchester, Ontario, a settlement on the north shore of Lake Erie. At the time of Thompson’s birth in 1859, Canada was a dominion within the British Empire. In 1807, Britain passed […]

Digital Chronicles: Preserving Heritage, Empowering Futures

Join MOBA Projects and LED (Lab of Excellence in Digital Asset Management) on April 18th for a special webinar in honour of UNESCO’s International Day for Monuments and Sites, also known as World Heritage Day!  Dive into the world of digital heritage preservation and explore how technology is shaping the future of cultural history. Discover […]

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS!

MobaProjects Wants To Hear From You! We are excited to announce the launch of the MobaProjects Blog! Our initiative began in 2021 and thanks to recent media coverage, our brand is becoming known leader in this space. We thank you for your support! Our aim is to give the public, researchers, scholars, students (of all […]

MOBA Project Updates!

In September 2023, Mapping Ontario’s Black Archives (MOBA) launched at Artists and Archivists in Dialogue as a user-friendly portal to access the province’s Black collections. In January, 2024, Dr. Cheryl wrote about the event on her blog. Since then, here’s what the MOBA team has been up to: 

Blackface in the Kodak Archive, Ryerson’s Special Collections: Context for Reading ‘Racist’ Images

Advertisement from the Ladies Home Journal, 1912. Image from the Duke Universities Library, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History, Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850-1920 digital collection. Item number 429898. Introduction In 2019, I exhibited my SSHRC-Insight Development Grant-funded research, “Newspapers, Minstrelsy and Black Performance at the Theatre: Mapping the Spaces […]

Marcus Garvey’s Place in Toronto’s History

This article originally appeared on Spacing.ca on August 17, 2018. For the past several years, 355 College Street has been home to Thymeless Bar, a reggae nightspot situated just steps from Kensington Market. What many people forget or don’t know is that for 57 years — from 1925 to 1982 — this building was home […]

Black Canada and Why the Archival Logic of Memory Needs Reform

There is no definitive national Black archive in Canada to preserve, promote, and protect the historical books, documents, and artefacts of Black Canadians. Instead, Canada’s Black archive comprises disparate collections, spread across the country, that aim to preserve the histories of African Canadians who live(d) in specific provinces and/or cities and/or towns. 1 By contrast, […]