Over the past three years the Society for the Preservation of Canada’s Nuclear Heritage Inc. (SPCNHI) has collected a large number of documents and books related to the nuclear industry. The collection was recently visited by its first academic researcher.
Elias Maia is a Brazilian historian specializing in preserving the scientific collection of the Astronomy Museum of Science and Technology (MAST) in Brazil. He worked at that institution for six years cataloguing the scientific instruments and personal archives of researchers. For the last year he researched MAST’s holdings related to nuclear energy. Elias has a master’s degree and a doctorate from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), where he worked for nine years organizing and researching the historical collection of the Faculty of Medicine.
Elias is currently gathering information for a post-doctoral, comparative study of the history and development of nuclear technology in Brazil and Canada over the three decades beginning with the year 1940. He has spent several weeks researching archives in Montreal and at Library and Archives Canada (LAC) in Ottawa, concentrating on the LAC holdings of David Keys and George Laurence.
Elias spent two days in Deep River meeting with several members of the Society and working through some of the Society’s collection. He hopes to return in the near future for a more extensive research session. The day following his return to the LAC collection in Ottawa he was very pleased to locate a letter, dated 23 January 1956, from Dr. Keys to Dr. J. Goldemberg of the University of Sao Paula thanking him for the collection of nuclear physics research papers from Brazil he had sent to Chalk River.
The Society document and book collection continues to grow, unfortunately faster than the existing group of volunteers can cope with the cataloguing, but it is hoped it will become a major repository and stopping point for future Canadian and off-shore researchers.
