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# '''Locate and inventory''' all surviving community television recordings from Thunder Bay's broadcast history — in the archives of Dougall Media (owner of CKPR-TV and CHFD-TV), Shaw/Rogers, the Thunder Bay Museum, the City Archives, Lakehead University, the Thunder Bay Public Library, and in the private collections of former producers, hosts, and their families (including the estates of LaRea and Bill Moody, Gerry Isherwood, and others).
# '''Locate and inventory''' all surviving community television recordings from Thunder Bay's broadcast history — in the archives of Dougall Media (owner of CKPR-TV and CHFD-TV), Shaw/Rogers, the Thunder Bay Museum, the City Archives, Lakehead University, the Thunder Bay Public Library, and in the private collections of former producers, hosts, and their families (including the estates of LaRea and Bill Moody, Gerry Isherwood, and others).
# '''Digitize''' the material to archival-quality digital formats before the physical media degrades beyond recovery. This requires professional tape playback equipment (increasingly scarce and itself deteriorating) and trained technicians.
# '''Digitize''' the material to archival-quality digital formats before the physical media degrades beyond recovery. This requires professional tape playback equipment (increasingly scarce and itself deteriorating) and trained technicians.
# '''Transcribe''' the audio content of every interview, using a combination of AI-assisted speech-to-text (which has become remarkably accurate even for accented speech and older audio quality) and human verification. The resulting transcripts would be full-text searchable and could be processed by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_language_model large language models] and other research tools.
# '''Transcribe''' the audio content of every interview, using a combination of AI-assisted speech-to-text (which has become remarkably accurate even for accented speech and older audio quality) and human verification. The resulting transcripts would be full-text searchable and could be processed by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_language_model large language models] and other research tools.
# '''Index and cross-reference''' the transcribed content against the broader Lakeheadology knowledge base — linking mentions of people, places, businesses, and events to their corresponding entries in biographical dictionaries, the ''Gateway'' database, ''Papers & Records'', and other sources.
# '''Index and cross-reference''' the transcribed content against the broader Lakeheadology knowledge base — linking mentions of people, places, businesses, and events to their corresponding entries in biographical dictionaries, the ''Gateway'' database, ''Papers & Records'', and other sources.
# '''Publish''' the digitized video, transcripts, and metadata in an openly accessible online archive, with time-coded navigation so that researchers can locate specific segments without watching entire episodes.
# '''Publish''' the digitized video, transcripts, and metadata in an openly accessible online archive, with time-coded navigation so that researchers can locate specific segments without watching entire episodes.


Revision as of 05:06, 24 February 2026

Lakeheadology is the study of the history of Thunder Bay and the surrounding area, especially since the creation of Port Arthur and Fort William in the mid-19th century. The term encompasses the work of academic historians, independent scholars, community archivists, and amateur enthusiasts who have documented the region's development from its Indigenous roots and fur trade origins through to the modern era. The Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society, founded in 1908, has served as a central institution for this field, publishing the peer-reviewed journal Papers & Records and presenting annual publication awards in five categories named after notable regional historians.

Professional historians and academics

This section lists university-affiliated researchers, museum professionals, and credentialed historians who have contributed to the scholarly study of Thunder Bay and Northwestern Ontario history.

Lakehead University, Department of History

  • Dr. M. Elizabeth Arthur — Founding member of the Department of History at Lakehead University and former department chair. Author of Thunder Bay District, 1821–1892: A Collection of Documents (Champlain Society, 1973), a monumental work on the documentary history of the region. She also served on the Council of the Champlain Society and guided the revival of the Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society's Papers & Records in the 1970s. The Society's award for best full-length scholarly work is named in her honour.
  • Dr. Michel S. Beaulieu, FRHistS — Professor of History (now Provost and Vice-President Academic at the University of Northern British Columbia). Lakehead alumnus (BA, BEd, MA) with a PhD from Queen's University. Author/co-author of Labour at the Lakehead: Ethnicity, Socialism, and Politics, 1900–1935 (UBC Press, 2011), Celluloid Dreams: An Illustrated History of Early Film at the Lakehead, 1900–1931 (2012), and co-author of North of Superior: An Illustrated History of Northwestern Ontario (with Chris Southcott, 2010) and Thunder Bay and the First World War, 1914–1919 (with David Ratz, Thorold Tronrud, and Jenna Kirker, 2018). Past president of both the Ontario Historical Society and the Champlain Society, and recipient of the OHS Cruikshank Gold Medal (2024), the Society's highest honour. Also holds academic appointments at the University of Helsinki and University of Oulu. Lakehead profile
  • Dr. Ernest R. Zimmermann (1931–2008) — Professor of History at Lakehead University from 1967 until retirement; former Chair of the Department of History and Dean of Arts. Born in Germany, he survived World War II bombing campaigns before emigrating to Canada. His posthumous work The Little Third Reich on Lake Superior: A History of Canadian Internment Camp R (University of Alberta Press, 2015), completed by Beaulieu and Ratz, is the definitive account of the WWII prisoner-of-war camp at Red Rock, Ontario. The Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society's first-publication award is named in his honour.
  • Dr. Peter Raffo — Adjunct Professor and Professor Emeritus, Lakehead University Department of History, serving since 1967. Specialist in the history of the amalgamation of Port Arthur and Fort William into Thunder Bay. Author of Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital: From Institution to Community (2005) and "Saul Laskin and the Making of Thunder Bay" (Papers & Records XLVIII, 2020). Recipient of the City of Thunder Bay Heritage Award (2012). Has also produced radio documentaries for CBC. Globe and Mail op-ed on amalgamation
  • Dr. Ronald Harpelle — Professor of History at Lakehead University. Specialist in Latin American/Caribbean history and Finnish immigration to Canada. Director of a media lab focused on documentary films; produced Under the Red Star (with filmmaker Kelly Saxberg), a docu-drama about Finnish immigration and radicalism in Thunder Bay, and Where the Poppies Blow: The Lakehead at War. Past Vice-President of the Finlandia Association of Thunder Bay. Co-editor of Hard Work Conquers All: Building the Finnish Community in Canada (UBC Press, 2018). Personal website
  • Dr. David K. Ratz — Adjunct Professor at Lakehead University and Lieutenant-Colonel (retired), formerly Commanding Officer of the Lake Superior Scottish Regiment. PhD from the University of Oulu, Finland. Co-editor of The Little Third Reich on Lake Superior and co-author of Thunder Bay and the First World War, 1914–1919. Specialist in military history of Northwestern Ontario and Finnish-Canadian relations. Selected publications
  • Dr. Patricia Jasen — Professor Emeritus at Lakehead University (History, later English). PhD from the University of Manitoba. Author of Wild Things: Nature, Culture, and Tourism in Ontario, 1790–1914 (University of Toronto Press, 1995), which includes significant discussion of the Thunder Bay District. Taught at Lakehead for over 25 years and served as graduate coordinator for the history program.
  • Dr. C. Nathan Hatton — Faculty member, Department of History, Lakehead University. Reviewed Scollie's Biographical Dictionary and History of Victorian Thunder Bay for the Canadian Historical Review.
  • Dr. Steven Jobbitt — Faculty member, Department of History, Lakehead University. Recipient of a Lakehead University Contribution to Teaching Award.
  • Dr. Thomas W. Dunk (later at Brock University) — Sociologist/anthropologist who studied Thunder Bay's working-class culture; author of It's a Working Man's Town: Male Working-Class Culture in Northwestern Ontario (McGill-Queen's, 1991).

Other university-affiliated researchers

  • Dr. Chris Southcott — Lakehead University sociologist and co-author (with Michel Beaulieu) of North of Superior: An Illustrated History of Northwestern Ontario (Lorimer, 2010).
  • Dr. A. Ernest Epp — Co-editor (with Thorold Tronrud) of Thunder Bay: From Rivalry to Unity (Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society, 1995), a key multi-author volume on the city's history.
  • Dr. K.C.A. Dawson — Lakehead University archaeologist; author of Original People and Euro Canadians in Northwestern Ontario: The Road West, the Hinge of a Developing State (2004).
  • Harold S. Braun — Author of A Northern Vision: The Development of Lakehead University (Lakehead University, 1987).
  • W. Robert Wightman and Nancy M. Wightman — Authors of The Land Between: Northwestern Ontario Resource Development, 1800 to the 1990s (University of Toronto Press), a comprehensive resource development history.
  • Samira Saramo — Researcher who has studied the Finnish-Canadian experience from a feminist perspective.
  • Dr. Jane Nicholas — Professor at St. Jerome's University. Author of an article on Sylvia Horn, a local dance teacher in Thunder Bay.

Museum and archives professionals

  • Dr. Thorold "Tory" Tronrud — Long-serving director/curator of the Thunder Bay Historical Museum. Author of Guardians of Progress: Boosters and Boosterism in Thunder Bay, 1870–1914 (1993) and numerous popular articles, including 101 Fascinating Questions about our History series. Co-editor of Thunder Bay: From Rivalry to Unity and co-editor of Papers & Records. Recipient of the Ontario Historical Society Cruikshank Gold Medal (2019). OHS Gold Medal citation (PDF)
  • Christina Wakefield — City Archivist, City of Thunder Bay Archives. Oversees the city's archival collections and curates the annual Women's History Month Exhibit (established 2013), which celebrates the contributions of women to the community.
  • Jean Morrison (1927–2014) — Research historian at Fort William Historical Park (1975–1990). First woman to receive an MA in History from Lakehead University (1974). Author of Superior Rendezvous-Place: Fort William in the Canadian Fur Trade (Natural Heritage Books, 2007), Labour Pains: Thunder Bay's Working Class in Canada's Wheat Boom Era (TBHMS, 2009; winner of the OHS J.J. Talman Award), and Lake Superior to Rainy Lake: Three Centuries of Fur Trade History (TBHMS, 2003/2023). The library at Fort William Historical Park is named in her honour. City of Thunder Bay tribute
  • Kelly Saxberg — Filmmaker and instructor at Lakehead University's Department of History. Director/editor of Under the Red Star and Where the Poppies Blow. Co-founder of the Friends of the Finnish Labour Temple. Partner in ShebaFilms Ltd.
  • Beverly Soloway — Instructor, Lakehead University Department of History. Author of articles on fur trade domestic history, including "The Fur Traders' Garden: Horticultural Imperialism in Rupert's Land, 1670–1770" (winner of the J.P. Bertrand Award). Also contributed "The History of the Current River Neighbourhood" to Papers & Records.

Historical figures in Lakeheadology

  • J.P. Bertrand — Arrived at the Lakehead in 1900 and established himself as a leading expert on regional history through numerous talks, articles, and books, including Highway of Destiny and Timber Wolves (TBHMS, 1997). The Society's scholarly article award is named in his honour.
  • Gertrude H. Dyke — The Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society's popular full-length work award is named after her.
  • George B. Macgillivray — Author of A History of Fort William and Port Arthur Newspapers (1987). The Society's popular article award bears his name.

Independent scholars and published authors

This section lists non-university-affiliated researchers, independent scholars, and published authors who have made significant contributions to the study of Thunder Bay history.

  • Frederick Brent Scollie — Ottawa-based scholar and longtime member of the editorial board of the Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society. Contributor of biographies to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Author of Thunder Bay Mayors & Councillors, 1873–1945 (TBHMS, 2000), a comprehensive biographical and genealogical dictionary covering all 414 individuals who served in municipal public office, and Biographical Dictionary and History of Victorian Thunder Bay (1850–1901) (TBHMS, 2020). Also compiled the complete Subject Index for Papers & Records Volumes I–XLVI. TBHMS listing
  • Elinor Barr (HBA 1989) — Research associate of the Lakehead Social History Institute. Raised in Ignace by Swedish parents. Author of Swedes in Canada: Invisible Immigrants (University of Toronto Press, 2015), Thunder Bay to Gunflint: The Port Arthur, Duluth, & Western Railway (TBHMS, 1999), and articles on Swedish immigrant families in Northwestern Ontario.
  • John Potestio (MA 1982, HBA 1970) — Retired high school teacher and contract lecturer in Italian culture at Lakehead University. Author of The Italians of Thunder Bay (2005), In Search of a Better Life: Emigration to Thunder Bay from a Small Town in Calabria (1999), The Memoirs of Giovanni Veltri (1987), and The History of the Port Arthur Italian Mutual Benefit Society (1985). Co-editor (with Antonio Pucci) of The Italian Immigrant Experience (1988) and Thunder Bay's People (1987).
  • Antonio Pucci (MA 1977) — High school teacher with the Lakehead District Catholic School Board. Author and editor of works exploring the history of the Italian community in Thunder Bay.
  • Roy H. Piovesana (MA 1969, BA 1965) — Historian at the Roman Catholic Diocese of Thunder Bay. Author of Hope and Charity: An Illustrated History of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Thunder Bay (2002), Robert J. Manion: Member of Parliament for Fort William, 1917–1935, and co-author of Paper and People: An Illustrated History of Great Lakes Paper and Its Successors. Past president of the Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society and the Thunder Bay Art Gallery. Served as a trustee with the Canadian Museum of Nature.
  • Joseph M. Mauro — Author of Thunder Bay: A History: The Golden Gateway of the Great Northwest (City of Thunder Bay, 1981) and Thunder Bay: A City's Story (c. 1990).
  • Diane Grant (1933–2022) — Author of The Street Names of Thunder Bay (Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society, 1999), a comprehensive compilation documenting the origin and history of every street name in the city. Donated the rights to the work to the Thunder Bay Museum. Obituary
  • Tania L. Saj and Elle Andra-Warner — Co-authors of Life in a Thundering Bay (2007). Dr. Saj is an anthropologist with a PhD from the University of Calgary and numerous publications in biological and anthropological journals; Thunder Bay is her hometown. Andra-Warner is a journalist and author of several non-fiction books, including works on the Edmund Fitzgerald, Robert Service, the Hudson's Bay Company, and the Mounties; she is a long-time resident of Thunder Bay.
  • Peter B. Worrell — Author of Policing the Lakehead (Board of Commissioners of Police, 1989).
  • James R. Stevens — Author of multiple works published by TBHMS, including material on Indigenous history.
  • Wayne Pettit — Author of works on transportation history in the Thunder Bay area, published by TBHMS.
  • John Pateman — Author of multiple Thunder Bay WWI-related publications, including Canadian General Hospital (2020), Port Arthur to Orpington Hospital: Tom Stanworth Goes To War (2020), and Thunder Bay and World War One: 1917 (2020).
  • David W. Tarbet — Author of Grain Dust Dreams (SUNY, 2015), winner of the Ernest R. Zimmermann First Publication Award.

Amateur historians and community enthusiasts

This section lists individuals who pursue Lakehead history as a personal passion, hobby, or community project, typically without formal academic affiliation.

  • Michael B. Currie — Canadian entrepreneur and CFA charterholder based in Bangkok, Thailand. Creator of Curriepedia, a personal wiki project documenting the genealogical and social history of Thunder Bay families with connections to the region. Curriepedia
  • Brian G. Spare, PhD (d. 2024) — Local author, freelance copywriter, and regular contributor to Bayview Magazine in Thunder Bay. Wrote extensively on local history topics including the evolution of the city, the Outlaw Bridge to Duluth, Rotary's century of service, Thunder Bay's breakwater, and the Eaton's building. His Evolution of a City series was nominated for the George B. MacGillivray Publication Award. Originally from Sudbury. Personal blog
  • Harold Alanen — Retired elementary school teacher and principal; officially recognized by the Ontario government as an "amateur archaeologist." Author of They Came From All Around: A History of the 1,200 Square Mile Area From Nolalu to Northern Light Lake, a best-selling work covering the area from its first inhabitants 9,000 years ago to Finnish immigrants in the 1900s. Part of a network of metal detectorists specializing in fur trade and raw copper artifacts across the Lake Superior region. Northern Wilds Magazine profile
  • David Battistel (BA/BEd 1996) — History teacher, curriculum chair, and football coach at St. Patrick High School in Thunder Bay. President of the Silver Mountain and Area Historical Society, dedicated to preserving the history of the railway and surrounding area.
  • Conner Kilgour — Author of "The Secret Tunnels of Port Arthur" (Bayview Magazine, June 2019), winner of the George B. MacGillivray Award for popular articles.
  • Greg Johnsen — Author of "'Bats and Balls Have Been Sent For': The Beginnings of Baseball in Thunder Bay, 1875–1889" (Papers & Records XLVII, 2019), winner of the Ernest R. Zimmermann First Publication Award.
  • Art Gunnell — Author of Five Miles and All Uphill (2001) and compiler of the City of Port Arthur's Book of Remembrance.
  • Martti Kajorinne — Author of History of Finnish Businesses in the Thunder Bay Area (Finnish-Canadian Historical Society, 2006).
  • Carl H. Westerback — Author of "Tee Harbour: A Memoir of a Life in a Fishing Village in the 1930s" (Papers & Records XLIII, 2015).
  • Jim Lyzun — Author of Aviation in Thunder Bay (TBHMS, 2007), co-winner of the Gertrude H. Dyke Award.
  • Edgar J. Lavoie — Author of "Pioneering a Great Circle Route in Northern Ontario: Von Grounau's 'Greenland Whale' Overnight in Longlac" (Papers & Records XLVII, 2019).
  • Bob Ingraham — Author of "Sgt. Joe Hicks' War" (Papers & Records XXXVII, 2007).

Key institutions

  • Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society — Founded in 1908. Maintains archives of approximately 410 linear metres of textual records, 1,900 maps and plans, and 500,000 photographic images. Publishes the peer-reviewed journal Papers & Records (ISSN available) and hosts a monthly lecture series from September to April. Presents annual publication awards in five categories. Website
  • Lakehead University, Department of History — The primary academic centre for the study of Northwestern Ontario history, offering undergraduate and graduate programs. Website

Key publications

  • Papers & Records — Peer-reviewed journal of the Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society, published annually since 1973 (revived from earlier series).
  • Thunder Bay: From Rivalry to Unity — Edited by Thorold Tronrud and A. Ernest Epp (TBHMS, 1995).
  • Thunder Bay District, 1821–1892: A Collection of Documents — Compiled by Elizabeth Arthur (Champlain Society, 1973).
  • North of Superior: An Illustrated History of Northwestern Ontario — By Michel Beaulieu and Chris Southcott (Lorimer, 2010).
  • Thunder Bay and the First World War, 1914–1919 — By Beaulieu, Ratz, Tronrud, and Kirker (TBHMS, 2018).
  • The Land Between: Northwestern Ontario Resource Development, 1800 to the 1990s — By W. Robert Wightman and Nancy M. Wightman (University of Toronto Press).
  • Biographical Dictionary and History of Victorian Thunder Bay (1850–1901) — By Frederick Brent Scollie (TBHMS, 2020).
  • Gateway to Northwestern Ontario History — Digital database managed by the Thunder Bay Public Library. Online portal

Toward a formal methodology: history as verified, accumulative knowledge

Michael B. Currie, one of the contributors to Lakeheadology and the creator of Curriepedia, has advocated for a methodological shift in how local history is recorded, structured, and built upon. Drawing on his background in mathematical sciences (University of Waterloo) and his interest in Mathematical Eternalism, Currie argues that historical knowledge should aspire to the same standards of rigour, traceability, and composability as formal mathematics.

The analogy to formal proof systems

In mathematics, the Lean proof assistant and related projects such as Mathlib are engaged in a long-term effort to formalize the entirety of known mathematics into machine-verifiable proofs. Each new theorem must be built upon previously verified lemmas and definitions; nothing is accepted on authority alone. The result is a growing, interlinked edifice of knowledge where every claim can be traced back to its foundations and independently verified.

Currie proposes that Lakeheadology — and local history more broadly — should adopt an analogous structure:

  • Every historical claim should be a "proof" grounded in cited primary sources — just as a Lean theorem rests on axioms and previously proven lemmas, a historical assertion (a date, a biographical fact, a causal claim) should rest on identifiable evidence: archival documents, newspaper articles, census records, photographs, or oral testimony with provenance.
  • New articles and publications should explicitly build on and reference prior verified work — rather than each author starting from scratch or relying on received tradition, the field should function as an accumulation where each new contribution extends and cross-links the existing body of knowledge. A new article about a Fort William councillor, for example, should reference and extend Scollie's Biographical Dictionary (2020), not merely repeat facts from it without attribution.
  • Contradictions and gaps should be surfaced, not papered over — in a formal proof system, a contradiction immediately signals an error. In a formalized historical practice, conflicting accounts (differing dates, disputed attributions, variant spellings) should be explicitly flagged and resolved through source analysis, not silently ignored. This is particularly important in Thunder Bay's history, where the region's shifting place names (Prince Arthur's Landing, Port Arthur, Fort William, Shuniah, Neebing, the Lakehead, Thunder Bay) have long caused confusion in the historical record.
  • The knowledge base should be machine-readable and semantically linked — projects like the Thunder Bay Public Library's Gateway to Northwestern Ontario History and the City of Thunder Bay Archives represent steps in this direction, but Currie envisions going further: a structured, wiki-like or graph-database approach where individual historical facts are discrete, citable nodes that can be queried, cross-referenced, and built upon — much as Lean's Mathlib allows mathematicians to search for and reuse existing formalizations.

Practical implications

This approach has several practical consequences for the practice of Lakeheadology:

  1. Genealogical and biographical dictionaries like those by Scollie and the Gateway database become foundational "libraries" (in the Lean/Mathlib sense) upon which all subsequent work depends.
  2. The Papers & Records journal and the TBHMS lecture series function as the equivalent of new theorems being proposed and peer-reviewed before being added to the corpus.
  3. Community-contributed knowledge — from amateur historians, family researchers, blog authors, and oral history participants — is not excluded but is tagged with its evidentiary basis, allowing it to be incorporated at an appropriate confidence level.
  4. Digital tools — wikis, structured databases, linked open data, and potentially AI-assisted verification — become essential infrastructure, not optional supplements.

Currie notes that the Curriepedia project is an early experiment in this direction: a personal wiki that attempts to interlink genealogical records, historical documents, and narrative accounts into a single, cross-referenced structure where each fact can be traced to its source.

This vision aligns with broader movements in digital humanities and computational history, but applies them specifically to the challenge of regional history, where the knowledge base is finite enough to aspire to near-completeness yet rich enough to benefit from formal structuring.

The information silo problem

A central obstacle to realizing this vision is that the vast majority of Lakeheadology's accumulated knowledge is currently siloed — locked inside physical books, behind paywalls, or accessible only by visiting specific institutions in person. The Papers & Records journal, the Henderson Directories, the Thunder Bay Public Library's microfilm newspaper collections, the biographical dictionaries, the published monographs — nearly all of this material exists in formats that cannot be searched, cross-referenced, or programmatically queried. As a consequence, it is nearly impossible to cross-check, synthesize, or build upon existing work in any systematic way.

This stands in stark contrast to the Lean/Mathlib model, where the entire corpus is not only verified but openly searchable and composable. In Mathlib, any mathematician anywhere in the world can search for an existing proof, depend on it, and extend it. In Lakeheadology, a researcher wanting to verify a single date or biographical detail may need to physically visit the Thunder Bay Museum archives, purchase an out-of-print book, or scroll through decades of microfilm.

A concrete example illustrates the cost of this friction. Diane Grant (1933–2022), a woman passionate about local history, wrote The Street Names of Thunder Bay (Thunder Bay Historical Museum Society, 1999) — a painstaking compilation documenting the origin and history of every street name in the city. This is precisely the kind of atomized, fact-rich reference work that would be enormously valuable as a searchable, linkable digital resource. Each street's entry could serve as a node in a larger knowledge graph — hyperlinked from articles about the people the streets were named after, from maps, from neighbourhood histories, and from genealogical records of the families who lived on them. Instead, a person must purchase the entire physical book and flip through it to find a particular street. There is no way to look up a single entry, no way to link to it from another resource, and no way for a tool — human or computational — to contextually surface the relevant information at the moment it is needed (for instance, as an inline annotation on a digital map or a hyperlink within an article about a specific neighbourhood).

This high-friction access model is not unique to Grant's book. It characterizes the field as a whole:

  • Scollie's Biographical Dictionary and History of Victorian Thunder Bay contains 849 biographical sketches — each one a potential node in a knowledge graph connecting people, places, institutions, and events — but exists only as a 376-page softcover volume.
  • The Papers & Records journal has published over 50 volumes of peer-reviewed articles since 1973, indexed by Scollie in a comprehensive subject index, but the articles themselves are not digitally searchable or individually linkable.
  • The Thunder Bay Public Library's newspaper indexes, dating back to the 1920s, represent decades of painstaking human labour — yet they index into microfilm, not into full-text digital archives that could be crawled, searched, or cross-referenced at scale.
  • Oral histories and lecture recordings, such as those produced through the TBHMS lecture series and the Reel Memories digitization project, capture irreplaceable first-person knowledge but remain largely inaccessible outside of institutional settings.

The emergence of large language models and other AI tools makes this silo problem more costly than ever. These tools excel at synthesizing, cross-referencing, and surfacing patterns across large bodies of text — but they can only operate on data they can access. A digitized, structured, openly accessible Lakeheadology corpus would allow researchers (and their AI assistants) to ask questions like "Which Fort William councillors between 1900 and 1920 were also involved in the grain trade?" or "What streets in Thunder Bay are named after people who served in World War I?" — questions that currently require days of manual research across multiple siloed sources, if they can be answered at all.

Currie argues that the path forward requires not just digitization (scanning pages into images) but structured digitization — converting the content of these works into machine-readable, semantically tagged, individually addressable records that can participate in the kind of interlinked, accumulative knowledge system envisioned above. The Gateway to Northwestern Ontario History database, which provides searchable access to over 3,500 photographs and 2,000 historical maps, demonstrates that this is achievable at institutional scale. The challenge is to extend this approach to the full breadth of the region's textual historical record.

Proposals

Living Histories: systematic biographical capture of Thunder Bay's elders

One of the most urgent problems facing Lakeheadology is not the digitization of existing records but the permanent loss of knowledge that has never been recorded at all. When a lifelong Thunder Bay resident dies, the obituary written by a grieving family member in 48 hours typically captures only a fraction of what the person knew and experienced — who owned which building on which corner, what a neighbourhood looked like before it was redeveloped, which families were connected and how, what the inside of a now-demolished factory or school looked like, and countless other details of lived experience that constitute the texture of the city's history. This information asymmetry between what a person knows and what their obituary preserves represents an enormous and ongoing loss to the historical record.

Michael B. Currie has proposed a structured initiative — provisionally called Living Histories — to address this loss systematically, by visiting every person in Thunder Bay over a certain age and producing a detailed, magazine-quality biographical profile while the person is still alive and able to contribute.

Concept

The core idea is to produce for every willing participant what amounts to a long-form feature article of the kind typically reserved for celebrities and public figures — but applied democratically to ordinary residents of Thunder Bay. Each profile would include:

  • A semi-structured biographical interview, guided by a standardized set of prompts: where the person was born, what their parents did, where they went to school, their first job, what their neighbourhood looked like when they were young, which businesses they remember that are now gone, what the biggest changes they have witnessed in the city are, their family connections, and their personal stories.
  • Professional photography — a flattering, high-quality portrait of the person in their home environment, and photographs of their home and surroundings as they exist today.
  • High-resolution scanning of personal photographs and documents — old family photos, snapshots of workplaces and neighbourhoods, letters, clippings, certificates, and other materials that exist only in the person's possession and that would otherwise be lost or discarded after their death. These scans would be archived in full resolution and made available for integration into the broader Lakeheadology knowledge base.
  • A published, linkable digital profile with contact information (mediated through a request-to-connect system to protect against fraud and scams targeting the elderly) so that researchers, genealogists, journalists, and other community members can reach out to the person while they are still alive and able to share their knowledge.

The result would be a growing, searchable archive of first-person accounts and photographic records, each one a node in the broader Lakeheadology knowledge graph — cross-linked to articles about the streets where people lived (extending Diane Grant's work), the businesses where they worked, the schools they attended, the churches and community organizations they belonged to, and the families they were part of.

Outreach and logistics

A central challenge is reaching the target population comprehensively. There is no publicly accessible, age-sorted list of residents in Canada; voter rolls contain birth dates but Elections Ontario restricts their use, and census microdata is anonymized. However, several practical channels exist:

  • Long-term care and retirement homes — Thunder Bay has approximately 15–20 facilities including St. Joseph's Heritage, Hogarth Riverview Manor, Hilldale Terraces, Pioneer Ridge, and Grandview Lodge. Each has an activities coordinator who could facilitate introductions and scheduling.
  • The Thunder Bay 55+ Centre — an established organization with a large active membership already engaged in programming and social activities.
  • Churches and faith communities — Thunder Bay's Finnish, Italian, Ukrainian, Polish, and Indigenous communities all have congregations with aging memberships. Pastors and priests are often aware of who among their congregants has deep local knowledge.
  • Royal Canadian Legion branches — Branch 5 (Fort William) and Branch 23 (Port Arthur). Veterans are precisely the demographic with irreplaceable stories about wartime service and mid-century Thunder Bay.
  • Service clubs — Rotary, Lions, Knights of Columbus, and similar organizations skew older and maintain active membership lists.
  • Multicultural organizations — the Finnish Canadian Historical Society, Finlandia Association, Italian Cultural Centre, Sons of Italy, and the Thunder Bay Multicultural Association.
  • Indigenous elders — through the Thunder Bay Indigenous Friendship Centre, Nishnawbe Aski Nation offices, and Fort William First Nation. This is especially urgent as many Indigenous elders are knowledge keepers for oral traditions that exist nowhere else.
  • Local media — the Chronicle Journal, TBNewsWatch, and Bayview Magazine could run a regular "Living History" feature and invite submissions, creating both awareness and content simultaneously.
  • Home care networks — Ontario Health home care workers visit hundreds of isolated seniors; while privacy rules prevent sharing client lists, workers could distribute informational materials about the program.

Scale and cost

According to the 2021 Canadian Census, the Thunder Bay District has approximately 32,140 residents aged 65 and over, of whom 3,880 are aged 85 and over. The urgency of the project is obvious: the 85+ cohort represents the most irreplaceable knowledge and the shortest remaining window in which to capture it.

Currie estimates the project could operate with a small dedicated team — one professional interviewer/photographer and two student assistants — at an annual cost of approximately $100,000 CAD. At a rate of four visits per day (approximately 1,000–1,500 profiles per year depending on session length and travel time), the team could:

  • Complete all willing participants over 85 within approximately 3 years (targeting ~3,500 people),
  • Complete all willing participants over 65 within approximately 20 years (targeting ~32,000 people), and
  • Reach a steady state in which new entrants to the 65+ cohort are profiled on an ongoing basis.

The total cost to achieve comprehensive coverage of the current 65+ population would be approximately $2 million CAD over 20 years — a modest investment relative to the scale of knowledge preserved. For comparison, a single academic research chair costs substantially more while producing knowledge about far fewer individuals.

Precedents

Several existing projects demonstrate the viability of systematic biographical capture at scale:

  • StoryCorps (United States) — since 2003, has recorded over 600,000 interviews with ordinary Americans, archived at the Library of Congress. StoryCorps uses a standardized 40-minute format and has deployed mobile recording booths nationwide.
  • The BBC's WW2 People's War project — collected 47,000 stories and 15,000 images from members of the public between 2003 and 2006 by framing participation as contribution to a shared national record.
  • "Living Treasures" programs — adopted by various communities (including several in Japan, where the concept of ningen kokuhō or "living national treasures" originates) to honour and record the knowledge of elderly artisans, storytellers, and community leaders while they are still alive.
  • The Reel Memories of the Lakehead Newsreel Digitization Project — led locally by Scott Bradley at the Thunder Bay Historical Museum, demonstrates that Thunder Bay institutions have both the appetite and the infrastructure for large-scale archival capture.

The Living Histories proposal extends these precedents by combining them with the structured, interlinked, machine-readable approach described in the methodology section above — so that each profile is not merely an archived recording but a node in a knowledge graph that can be searched, cross-referenced, and built upon by future researchers and their AI tools.

Community television archives: digitizing and transcribing Thunder Bay's broadcast heritage

A parallel and equally urgent preservation challenge concerns the vast archive of community television programming produced in Thunder Bay from the 1970s onward. Over several decades, local cable and broadcast stations produced hundreds — possibly thousands — of hours of interview-based programming in which ordinary and notable Thunder Bay residents discussed their lives, work, and memories on camera. Much of this material exists only on deteriorating videotape in private collections, station storage rooms, or institutional basements, and is at imminent risk of permanent loss.

The scope of the archive

Thunder Bay's broadcast ecosystem has been unusually rich for a mid-sized Canadian city, owing to its geographic isolation and the resulting need for locally produced content. Key sources of community interview material include:

  • LaRea Moody (1925–2021) and her husband Bill produced and hosted Best Seat in the House for approximately ten years on local cable television, interviewing a wide range of performing artists and cultural figures. The show won the MacLean Hunter Award for outstanding public service. Moody, a Columbia University and Brooklyn College graduate who moved to Thunder Bay in 1971, was deeply embedded in the city's cultural scene through the Thunder Bay Symphony and Regional Arts Council boards, fundraising for Lakehead University, and her long career as the Law Library librarian at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (the library was renamed the LaRea Moody Law Library upon her retirement).
  • Gerry Isherwood hosted Around Town on CKPR-TV through the 1970s and 1980s, airing after the 6 p.m. news. An English-born personality who had previously worked on the Merv Griffin show in New York, Isherwood became one of Thunder Bay's most recognized broadcasters and conducted interviews with a broad cross-section of the community.
  • Marion Vickruk hosted an afternoon television programme on CKPR, featuring local interviews and community interest segments.
  • Elinore Nickolson hosted a popular afternoon TV show on CKPR.
  • Rick Smith hosted a long-running talk show on CKPR radio and television, spanning over four decades with Dougall Media before his retirement in 2006.
  • Ethnic language programming on both CKPR-TV and CHFD-TV included regular Finnish, Ukrainian, and Italian community segments. CHFD-TV's partly locally-produced program Panorama was directed at the Italian community. Mario Caccamo broadcast The Italian Musical Panorama on CKPR radio for 52 years (1961–2013), and Pennti Junni delivered a weekly Finnish-language show for 48 years — both programmes that would have included substantial community interview content.
  • Shaw Spotlight (channel 10), the community channel operated first by Maclean Hunter Cable TV (which served Thunder Bay before being acquired by Rogers in 1994) and later by Shaw Communications, has continuously produced local programming including talk shows, event coverage, and community profiles. More recently, Shaw Spotlight partnered with Lakehead University on Research Matters, a talk show featuring interviews with university researchers.
  • The Reel Memories of the Lakehead Newsreel Digitization Project, led by Scott Bradley at the Thunder Bay Historical Museum in partnership with ShebaFilms, has already demonstrated the feasibility and value of digitizing audiovisual material — but focuses on newsreel footage rather than the long-form interview content described here.

What is at stake

The historical value of this material is enormous. A single episode of Best Seat in the House or Around Town might contain a 20-minute conversation with a local business owner, artist, veteran, or community leader who is now deceased — a conversation in which they describe in their own words and voice details about the city that exist nowhere else in the written record. Collectively, these archives represent a first-person oral history of Thunder Bay spanning roughly half a century, produced in a structured, broadcast-quality format that lends itself well to digitization.

The physical media on which these programmes were recorded — primarily VHS, Betacam, and U-matic videotape, with some early material on 2-inch quad tape — is degrading. Magnetic tape has a finite lifespan; oxide shedding, binder breakdown, and demagnetization progressively destroy the signal. Industry estimates suggest that much videotape from the 1970s and 1980s has already passed or is approaching the point of unrecoverability. Every year of delay increases the proportion of material that will be permanently lost.

The proposal

Currie proposes a systematic effort to:

  1. Locate and inventory all surviving community television recordings from Thunder Bay's broadcast history — in the archives of Dougall Media (owner of CKPR-TV and CHFD-TV), Shaw/Rogers, the Thunder Bay Museum, the City Archives, Lakehead University, the Thunder Bay Public Library, and in the private collections of former producers, hosts, and their families (including the estates of LaRea and Bill Moody, Gerry Isherwood, and others).
  2. Digitize the material to archival-quality digital formats before the physical media degrades beyond recovery. This requires professional tape playback equipment (increasingly scarce and itself deteriorating) and trained technicians.
  3. Transcribe the audio content of every interview, using a combination of AI-assisted speech-to-text (which has become remarkably accurate even for accented speech and older audio quality) and human verification. The resulting transcripts would be full-text searchable and could be processed by large language models and other research tools.
  4. Index and cross-reference the transcribed content against the broader Lakeheadology knowledge base — linking mentions of people, places, businesses, and events to their corresponding entries in biographical dictionaries, the Gateway database, Papers & Records, and other sources.
  5. Publish the digitized video, transcripts, and metadata in an openly accessible online archive, with time-coded navigation so that researchers can locate specific segments without watching entire episodes.

The result would be a searchable, machine-readable oral history archive of Thunder Bay — complementing the Living Histories initiative (which captures knowledge from people who are still alive) with the preservation of knowledge already recorded on tape from people who may no longer be available.

Cost and feasibility

Professional videotape digitization typically costs $25–75 CAD per tape depending on format and condition. If the total community television archive amounts to 2,000–5,000 tapes (a rough estimate spanning multiple stations and decades), the digitization cost alone would be approximately $100,000–$375,000 CAD. AI-assisted transcription is now extremely inexpensive at scale (under $0.10 per minute of audio), meaning that 5,000 hours of content could be transcribed for under $30,000 CAD, with human verification adding a comparable amount. The total cost of the project — including inventory, digitization, transcription, indexing, and publication — would likely fall in the range of $250,000–$500,000 CAD, a fraction of the cost of producing the original programming and a modest investment relative to the irreplaceable historical value of the material.

See also

External links

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