Potentially harmful content - Archives of Ontario

Harmful language in our collections

You may encounter harmful language in our collections.

We collect records related to all aspects of the history of the place we now call Ontario. This includes materials that document past and continuing injustices and violence, offensive or harmful attitudes and behaviours and records of a personally or culturally sensitive nature.

We describe these materials to make them accessible to the public. We believe it is important for difficult aspects of Ontario’s history to be documented, accessible, and known so that individuals and institutions – including the Archives of Ontario – may be held accountable for their actions.

Anti-Black racism on our montage wall

Our montage wall in the Reading Room was installed in 2009 to showcase over 250 years of Ontario history as reflected in our archival collection.

In 2021, we learned that an image on the wall contained an anti-Black racist slur. Following consultation with the Ontario Anti-Racism Directorate, we decided to blur the record’s content and provide a label on the wall linking to this page.

These actions were taken to:

prevent researchers from encountering anti-Black racism in a public setting
maintain access to information about the record so as not to sanitize Ontario history
be accountable for our oversight in displaying this record openly from 2009-2021

The record is of a poster created on June 8, 1894, to advertise a garden party and strawberry festival in aid of St. John’s English Church in Weston, Ontario.

It features an anti-Black racist slur, “pickaninny,” when referring to a performance by the Choir Boys of St. Stephen’s in Toronto titled the “Pickaninny Boys” — most likely a minstrel show. The term has historically been used in English-speaking North America as a dehumanizing racial caricature of Black children. It had a harmful impact in 1894 and still does today.

A digitized copy of the poster (image I0030014) can be found in the record description in Collection Search. You can request to view the original record in the Reading Room with the following citation:

Title: Garden Party and Strawberry Festival, Weston

Reference Code: C 233-1-4-0-1930

Barcode: F000425

Content warnings

You may encounter content warnings on our website.

An example of a content warning on our website.

Content warnings are an accessibility feature on our website that allow users to choose if they want to view archival records that contain racist, sexist and/or violent imagery or language.

How we update our descriptions

We strive to improve the record descriptions in Collection Search to make them more accurate, respectful and to reduce harm. We balance this commitment with the need to maintain language used by record creators. We do not want to sanitize history by erasing past attitudes and worldviews.

We maintain the titles that creators give to their records. However, archivists sometimes amend these titles for clarity, accuracy or in response to an individual or community request. These changes are contained in square brackets beside the original words in the title. For example:

We believe this preserves the value of titles as evidence of past attitudes, while also creating space for new interpretations about the content and nature of our records.

Request a review of a description

Contact us if you believe a description is factually incorrect, inadequate or offensive and should be reviewed. We commit to starting our review within 15 business days.

We may remove content temporarily while we conduct our review, which may include consultation with outside experts.

We will notify you when we have reached a decision to remove content, revise it or reinstate it with no change.