Discussion: Orienteering History

A few years ago, Ontario Ontario received a garage full of boxes containing files and photos, mostly from the time when sport funding allowed OOA to have an office and part-time executive director. After much discussion with an OOA board member who has a Ph.D. in History (boy, were we lucky!), the Archives of Ontario has agreed to accept these materials.

"The Archives of Ontario is the largest provincial archives in Canada, and the premier source of information about the history of the land we now call Ontario and its people. Since 1903, we’ve been collecting, preserving, and making available the documentary heritage of the province."

After the donation this spring, it will be a few years before the files are made available to us or the public. Interested people will need to visit the Archives in Toronto; we don't expect them to be digitized. OOA's records will be donated to the Archives on an ongoing basis, e.g. meeting notes in Word.

We have the option of holding back some materials now with the caveat that they may not accept another physical donation for a few years. There isn't enough volunteer time to review all the materials before they go but we're dipping into them as we can.

There are old newsletters from some U.S. clubs and some info from the U.S. Federation. The timeframe is about 1989-1995. So far I've found news from SMOC, NEOC, HVO, Rochester and Buffalo. If nobody wants it, I'll send it to the Archives but it's not really part of OOA's history so I'd be happy to send it to organizations who keep their own historical records.

We also have records from Canadian provinces. I'll pursue that in another forum but if any of you are here and interested, please let me know!

Barb, I'll be happy to take the NEOC part. It might compement my stach from my precidency '72-'87 and a bit further on. I'll send you an e-mail.

Great! My email ID is in my profile.

By the way Bash remember last year you announced you were cleaning out and going to throw out boxes of an Orienteering Ontario book from the 1980s titled Orienteering: Training and Performance? I rescued a number of copies from you and brought some of them to Florida.
I have been giving copies to young orienteers who I think show promise and would appreciate the books.
In each case their training must have improved because their performance sure has. (One young lady has won all her races this year and last week bested all the boys on the same course. She is the closest thing to Emily Kemp that I have seen in North America since, well, Emily herself! No, I don't credit it all to one book and yes I might be exaggerating)
So folks: don't hesitate to raid Barb's storage because it seems some great treasures lie there.
(OTP has also been scanned and is available in pdf format, so is its companion book, Orienteering Skills and Strategies)

So glad you’ve made good use of them, Gord! The PDFs are available here for anyone interested. Both books are from the mid-1980s.
https://www.orienteeringontario.ca/train