The South Asian Canadian Digital Archives collects, digitizes, digitally preserves, and makes accessible materials with significant ties to the South Asian diaspora across Canada. The South Asian Canadian Digital Archive is an initiative of the South Asian Studies Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley. The South Asian Canadian Digital Archive partners with memory institutions, individuals, families and organizations to digitize, describe and provide online public access to heritage materials created by, or relevant to, the South Asian-Canadian diaspora. Its mandate allows the aggregation digital archival material from different repositories such as the City of Coquitlam Archives.
We invited South Asian Canadian Digital Archives staff to come and review the logbook at the City Archives. After studying it, they confirmed that many of the workers listed where of South Asian origin, primarily Punjabi/Sikh, and this would make it an excellent candidate for digitization.
Archives’ staff then reviewed the logbook and determined that only one early section of the logbook from 1912 to 1923 could be digitized due to privacy legislation. Because this section was over 100 years old, it was acceptable to digitize and make available for public access. The remainder of the ledger ran to 1955 and could not be digitized, as it contained highly sensitive information regarding Workers’ Compensation Board claims and had not met the 100 years threshold. South Asian Canadian Digital Staff digitized the 1912-1923 section and, in doing so, revealed the names of dozens of, until now, unknown, South Asian mill workers.