From time to time, we like to report on records recently arranged and described and made available to the public. For this Records Roundup post, we’re focusing on City records worked on by Archives staff this past year.
Engineering records
The Archives offers two brand new Engineering Services record series relating to development projects and totaling almost 20 metres of records. Following the City’s records retention schedules (overseen by the Corporate Records and Information Management program), these records came to us as one transfer of almost 130 banker’s boxes in 2022. Staff have now fully processed the records, and they are available for public access.
Series 726 – Major development project records dates from 1961 to 2016 and documents larger, more complex developments that would have had significant impact on the surrounding area and involved City services such as building regulations compliance or connections to City utilities. The series also includes records of shoreline, design, and traffic studies. Files are largely titled by project name, such as Collingwood Village, Fraserlands, or South East False Creek.
Series 727 – Minor development project records dates from 1985 to 2006 and documents smaller projects, typically for an individual building. Records include building and development permits and applications, and address issues such as landscaping, traffic, parking, or matters of public safety. Files are titled by address and/or permit application number.
Photographs and technical and architectural drawings are present throughout both series, but this varies from file to file.
Please note that both these record series are stored at our off-site satellite location. Researchers wanting to access this material can contact the Archives and staff will arrange to have the requested records brought in for access in our Vanier Park Reading Room.
City Council minutes indexes
Last year, we published a blog post on Finding Your Way Through City Council Minutes that broke down how to access the Council meeting minutes records series (COV-S31). Related, and also discussed in that post, is the record series City Council minutes indexes (COV-S32). These indexes were created contemporaneously by City Clerk’s Office staff to help them in looking up matters found within Council minutes.
Researchers currently reference the bulk of the historical indexes (starting from the first Council meeting in 1886) using microfilm access copies available in our Reading Room. To help make these indexes more easily and broadly searchable, we’ve been adding the indexes’ data to our electronic spreadsheet version that spans 1950-2009.
Archives staff, with part-time help from a colleague in the Clerk’s Office’s Access to Information unit, have undertaken a project to transcribe the indexes one decade at a time. In 2025, we finished the transcription of another 17 volumes of indexes for the complete 1940s. The spreadsheet (now covering 1940-2009) is available on the Archives’ database as a downloadable link from the series description under the notes field for Finding aids.
We plan to keep plugging away at transcription, moving backwards in time until the earliest City Council minutes indexes are available to search in digital format.
Park Board photographs
Over 1,800 photographs documenting activities of the Park Board are now described to the item-level and digitized copies are available online. The Park Board photographs series (VPK-S625) consists of over 2,400 photographs, including prints, slides, and negatives dating from ca. 1910 up to 1991. This batch of newly digitized images are made up of an accession transferred from the Park Board several decades ago. For many years, these photographs had been listed in a hardcopy finding aid available to researchers in the Reading Room. Now, each photograph has its own description added to our database with the digital access copy attached.
This group of digitized photographs are predominantly black and white prints and were taken in the 1960s by a Park Board staff member for publication and promotional use. Images include outdoor park spaces and maintenance, community centre construction, Park Board Commissioners, and Park Board employees at work. Recreational activities such as swimming, ice skating, fitness and art classes, and other Park Board services are also shown.
Previously, this series had approximately 600 photographs digitized and available to browse online. Most of these belong to a group of colour slides related to youth and kids programming from ca. 1950 to 1983. They had been digitized a few years ago for access purposes, while the physical slides permanently reside in a frozen storage vault. There are a small number of photographs in this series that remain un-scanned but can still be accessed by visiting our Reading Room.
Have a peek at a smattering of the newly digitized photographs below. Enjoy!
Stay tuned for a future installment of Records Roundup, next time focusing on some of our newly-available private-sector holdings.
