The Peterborough Examiner, in connection with its move to downtown Ashburnham, donated its archives, research library and photographic collections to the Trent Valley Archives. This is the largest donation of archives we have received since accepting the land records of Peterborough County.

The collection includes: 1. The complete microfilm collection of the Dispatch and the Examiner, 1847 to 2008; 2. a microfilm reader; 3. hard copies of newspapers, 1890s, 1970s, 2008; 4. File cabinets containing information arranged by subject on sports, elections, city council, Lindsay, and countless other subjects; 5. A large photographic collection that includes all the photos taken by the Examiner from the 1950s to the 1990s (contained in nearly 200 boxes); 6. Plaques and awards; 7. 52 boxes and filing cabinets relating to biographies and historical news clippings; 8. Ed Arnold’s working files for his books on Hockey Town, Peterborough Churches, and Whose Puck Is It Anyway?; 9. odds and ends.

It will be some time before the collection will be ready for researchers. However, we have other materials related to the Examiner, including archives of Ed Arnold and Wilson Craw. Diane has been indexing the Peterborough Examiner on microfilm and has reached 1890. The collections of Don Cournoyea, the clipping files of the Heritage Gazette of the Trent Valley, and many newspaper clippings in dozens of other collections all support this work. The Examiner was indexed in the 1970s, and TVA has that in the reading room.

We welcome volunteers to help with giving order to the Examiner fonds. We also need financial support as it takes money to acquire the archival shelving, proper archival quality boxes, protective files, photo paper, scanners and other materials for this collection. Please send your cheques to Trent Valley Archives, 567 Carnegie Avenue, Peterborough ON K9L 1N1, attention Treasurer, or make a donation on line.

We wish to thank Ed Arnold for his alertness and his awareness of the significance of such a comprehensive community collection, and looking after the details that brought the collection to the Trent Valley Archives. Thanks also to McWilliams Moving for supplying a terrific moving crew and for looking after the move of nearly 200 cubic feet of materials; this is a magnificent donation and we are thankful to Dan McWilliams for his generosity and community spirit. Wally Macht was our point man for much of the move.

The Trent Valley Archives has worked closely with the Examiner over the years, and we extend our gratitude for this collection, and for a continuing relationship. We hope to see Examiner reporters in our reading room, along with researchers hunting for obituaries or getting a sense of the sporting world or the community at large when their ancestors passed through Peterborough and area, or perhaps settled.