Saskatoon residents get rare look at city archives during grand opening

WATCH: The Saskatoon’s city archives has a news home. CTV’s Stacey Hein got to tour through time, learning abut Saskatoon’s history over the past century.

Members of the public got a rare behind-the-scenes look at Saskatoon’s city archives during its grand opening Tuesday night.

Dozens of people toured the archive room, which houses 4,000 feet of shelves filled with the city’s oldest and most significant pieces of history.

Jeff O’Brien has been the city archivist since 1997. O’Brien said opening the archive room to the public was both exciting and “terrifying.”

“I’ve never had that many people in the archives ever,” O’Brien said in an interview with CTV News. “To get people in here, to look around, to touch things, to sort of be part of them, that’s exciting.”

O’Brien said the search for the city archives’ permanent location took about 40 years.

When the city archives began in the 1980s, it contracted the provincial archives to manage the city’s records until 1992. After that, the archives was at the Arthur Cooke Building before moving to a location on Cardinal Crescent in 2010.

Now, its permanent home is in the city’s Civic Square East building – right across from City Hall.

“Now when somebody from City Hall says, ‘I need this information’ and I can say, ‘good come here, we’ll bring it out, you can look at it yourself,’” O’Brien said.

He said the new location is larger and climate controlled, which helps with preserving the archives. He also notes it’s more accessible by transit than the previous location.

Mayor Cynthia Block said the archives provide an opportunity to learn about the city’s history and the untold stories of marginalized groups.

“Understanding the stories that maybe weren’t told and how we need to learn to tell them better,” Block said in an interview with CTV News on Tuesday.

She notes the archives will also help future generations.

“What will we learn in the times we live in that will help to inform the people that come after us to make better decisions,” Block said.