As a student pursuing a joint honors degree in History and Philosophy, I am currently in the process of applying to PhD programs in Philosophy. As such, my time spent formally studying history will likely come to an end after the 2022/2023 academic year. While I am thrilled about what comes after McGill, I am somewhat saddened that I will no longer enjoy the phenomenal history course offered at McGill. The Summer internship that I have completed this Summer has been fantastic for this reason, allowing me to spend an enriched and intensive period working with primary historical documents. Without the internship, rich engagement with historical topics would not have been possible.
I have spent this Summer as one of two interns at the Black Watch Museum and Archives. The Black Watch is an illustrious and long distinguished regiment of the British Empire, first founded in Scotland. The Black Watch Royal Highland Regiment of Canada has served in every major war which Canada has taken part of as a colony, dominion, and nation-state of the commonwealth. As such, the regiment's armory in Montreal holds the most complete collection of Canadian military records in Canada outside of the archives in Ottawa. The mission of the Black Watch Museum and Archives is to preserve the plethora of documents and artifacts in its possession while making them as accessible to the public as possible.
This Summer, my main responsibility was concerned with the complete reorganization, cataloguing, and digitizing of the Black Watch scrapbooks. The scrapbooks span the late 19th century through the Cold War and contain day to day records of the activities of the Regiment both in peace and war times. They are truly one of a kind. Their preservation is important but making them accessible to the public through the creation of a digital database was the truly valuable goal. To date, this goal has largely been completely achieved and these scrapbooks are accessible to anyone who has access to the internet. Prior to my colleague and I working this Summer, these scrapbooks were locked in an archival room collecting dust. I have helped give these scrapbooks immortality and their records may be useful to military and academic researchers for generations to come.
Diligently we indexed and scanned these scrapbooks. Some were so old and fragile that it took painstaking attention to ensure we did not deal significant damage to them as we worked to preserve them. The vicissitudes of this work were immense. Hours would pass of mundane and seemingly boring periods in history where the regiment seemed to do little except drill and play baseball. Yet this would all be worth it when you would get a scrapbook covering a year like 1916 when the Canadians fought valiantly in France. I remember once I found an envelope pinned to the page of a scrapbook recording the events of Canadian forces in 1916. Unpinning the envelope, I quickly realized it did not contain a letter when I heard a bizarre rattling noise from within. I turned it over and scrawled on the back of the envelope with the words written, "mud from the Somme". Chills swept through me. Here I was, at work on a regular day, holding dirt that had come from one of the bloodiest battles of World War I. Men died on the soil I held in my hand. Historians have a cult obsession with primary documents. Young academics build their careers off untapped resources like the Black Watch Museum and Archives. Here I was holding dirt from the Somme; talk about a primary document! Similar experiences with powerful documents from World War I were the highlight of my internship.
This Summer internship contributed to my education in a way that not even my favorite History classes have done. Simultaneously, this internship exposed me to real world historical training through archival work while also teaching me valuable lessons about real world work outside of the university classroom. I loved learning all the history related artifacts that I was exposed to, but I equally loved the responsibility of having a job for which I was being paid. Had I not been granted a paid scholarship, work like this would have been impossible for me. I would have been forced to seek a job which had little if anything to do with my academic interests and would have been deprived of an opportunity which was equally academically and financially rewarding. I am grateful to Mrs. Mary Wemp and the Bryce Internship Award for making this experience possible.
