CHOMS visits Alberta Health Services Archives and Historical Collections
On July 15, 2022 the Calgary History of Medicine Society (CHOMS) set out for its long-awaited summer field excursion to the Alberta Health Services Archives and Historical Collections in Calgary, Alberta. They left from the UofC’s Cal Wenzel Precision Health Building in the early afternoon and arrived together at the Archives & Historic Collections’ office on 1117 - 55 Ave NE, Calgary, AB T2E 6W1 for a nice a 3-hours event – plus Friday afternoon coffee. Participants of the excursion were very lucky to have Mr. Dennis Slater as their experienced excursion guide. He has headed the AHS Archives & Historic Collections for fifteen years, is an active CHOMS participant himself, as well as a member-at-large of the society for many years. Following to an introduction to the history of the AHS Archives, participants received a walkthrough of the collections areas, with several highlights of the collections being shown: self-knit nursing uniforms from the Great Depression Era (when nurses still had to provide their own working cloths …), a make-shift hot water bottle (i.e. a “brick to be heated and wrapped in cloth”) from a Calgary legacy hospital, and a “portable EKG” machine from the 19th century (which needed four male wardens to be transported into a patient ward …). Following to a “sneak peek” into the archives’ shelving and storage area, the group enjoyed a nice coffee and cookies break, which stimulated further exchanges about experiences with working at the archives, sharing of observations made during the excursion, and hearing about future plans to potentially open an Internet-search interface for online research and to digitize newly arriving collection items (based on a pending proposal submitted to AHS). The wrap-up conversation regarding past and future uses of the archives and collections featured an almost never-ending Q&A, driven by burning questions of our CHOMS researchers and student members. Thank you so much to AHS Archives and Dennis Slater for hosting this exciting CHOMS summer excursion 2022!