Dr. Samantha Cutrara:       Hi, Kat. Thank you so much for talking with me today. Before we start, you could just tell everyone a little bit about Toronto’s First Post Office?

Kat Akerfeldt:        Yes. The Toronto’s First Post Office is a small museum with a small staff. It’s basically myself, and my job is to keep the doors open and keep things running as smoothly as possible. And Zoey, who’s our curator, and her job is to keep the museum going. She does all the good stuff like our social media, education programming, exhibits. And then we have a group of post clerks because within our museum, we have a postal counter, which goes back to the 1980s fundraising. Like I said, we’re an independent museum, so we really rely on grants, donations, and all kinds of fundraising including having a post office within our museum.

SC:        I ran some tours back in the day when I was an interpreter there, and I always thought that the type of learning activities you have in such a small space is so great.

Could you talk just a little bit about some of the learning activities that you have when we aren’t in this ‘pandemic pause’?

KA:        Yeah. Our standard program involves writing letters, the way they did when our post office, which is a national historic site, first opened in the 1830s. In the 1830s, people in Toronto were writing letters to family that they had left behind. This was a city of very recent immigrants, so communication was really important. And that’s part of our museum mandate to talk about the history of communication, especially around the early part of the city’s history.

So when we have programs here, it’s really hands-on. We have students writing with quills and ink, and even the kind of paper that they would be using in the 1830s, sealing it with a sealing wax and then mailing it using our post office. Our standard program is usually with grade threes, grade fours, but we have other programs for younger students for mixed age groups, like in day camps in the summer. We also have programs for adults.

One of the nice things about being an independent museum is we’re very adaptable to different kinds of groups and we can experiment. So if a group comes to us with special requirements, special needs, we can usually make that work for them. We do walking tours in the old town neighborhood. And, I remember actually, you and I worked together in education programming for a while. And I think some of the ideas that you brought in back then are still with us today. I remember you bringing in movement, so that, for example, we’re not just sitting for an hour and a half in our programs anymore.

SC:        Well, that’s so great. I mean, I didn’t do a lot, but it was so great to see how an independent museum runs and then the openness for experimentation that is possible, like you said.

What’s been really great, is that since you came as executive director, the social media presence of the museum has increased, there’s so many cool things happening: the bullet journal workshops and the paper fair. It’s been really cool to watch, and I guess that leads into a less than exciting conversation about how, or if, this shifts with the pandemic.

So the first question in this series starts with my own reflection, which is that I think that my view of history has changed a bit during this time because we can’t just think of history as, for lack of a better word, this leisure activity that we can pick up and put down when we want. Rather, in this moment we need to think about history as this thing that needs to live and breathe if it’s going to be useful during moments of crises. So this leads into the question of whether or not your vision of history has changed in thinking about your museum during this time?

KA:        Definitely. Like I say, it’s something that we’re grappling with right now, especially as we’re looking farther into the future and it looks like the museum is going to be closed longer than we hoped. We had hope that maybe it would just be a month or two of canceling events and we would catch up. And now we’re starting to think about how do we do what we do, which is a series of hands-on and experiential activities, how do we do that virtually? Does it have the same kind of value? Does it have the same kind of lessons? I think it really makes a difference and that’s something that we’re grappling with right now.

We are setting up online workshops going forward. We’re starting with workshops that are geared to adults, just stick our toe in the water a little bit. That seems to be a little bit easier to manage. And then we’ll see what we can do for teachers and for students after that; like, maybe it’s a recorded session. So it’s going to involve a lot of experimentation to figure out what value we can bring to this virtual education landscape.

SC:        This is going to be a real meta-observation and question, so I apologize in advance: But, we met as interpreters at Black Creek Pioneer Village, a living history museum that’s about ‘pioneer’ days, and a lot of these pioneer-type museums started in the 1960s through to the 1980s. In this time there was a real nostalgia for this particular mid-nineteenth century moment in the past. And I feel like a lot of pioneer museums have really been struggling with how to update the work that they do in this digital world. So with the pandemic and virtual education, this is going to force these updates even more.

Could you maybe talk a little bit about how you’re thinking of bringing these lessons from the 1830s to this 2020 audience – even as so much of the original work started as nostalgic interpretation?

KA:        Well, the experience of today’s students is really removed from the 1830s. And even millennials, these digital natives, are so far removed from that experience. So really, I’ve noticed the change in the last few years [not just in this moment], so when if I’m doing education programs, you really have to start with what is the common experience between somebody living in Toronto in the first year that it was a city and Toronto in the 186th year that it’s a city, so that you make a connection for the child and get a foothold for them to see what you mean.

I remember a few years ago now explaining to students, “this is why this paper is made from wood pulp and this paper is made from cotton rag and we can see and feel the difference when touching and looking at it.” And I had a student in the front row put up her hand and say to me, “Okay, but how you’re telling me no Internet?” And I said yes, and she’s like, “But then how did people know things?”

I think I maybe just stood there for a few minutes like, okay, that’s it. You know, I got to take a few steps back and start with a much bigger picture, then ‘okay, here’s a big pen, here’s a feather.’ I shouldn’t be starting with a tiny little detail. We need to be looking bigger picture.

And so it’s sometimes hard, especially when we’re talking to grades threes and grade fours, you don’t really want to start with talking about big topics like the immigration experience or cholera, you know. But when we’re talking about big experiences like that, it is a little bit easier for the students to find themselves in there.

If we can start with these big ideas, maybe it’s a little bit easier to make those connections, if you see what I’m going for?

SC:        Yeah, totally. And I think that — I mean, I guess what I wanted to get at by I was saying about nostalgia. I think in the 1960s, it was like, ‘let’s just revere these old timey ways without these bringing in about how your current experience can help you make sense of the past.’

And so, I think that’s really useful what you’re saying because I remember when I was working at Black Creek and I was in the Manse and I had said to a group of students, ‘this is the minister’s house.’ And a grade three student said to me, “How does the prime minister get elected?” And I was like, ‘what now?’

But it was because the young boy, an immigrant, coming from a predominantly Muslim area, he wasn’t thinking of a Christian minister – he was thinking of the Prime Minister. And that was of moment of like, ‘okay, that’s right,’ but we have to keep shifting our points of reference for these students if this is going to remain relevant.

So do you think your points of reference related to teaching history will shift after this? or during this? Do you think you’re going to teach history differently after this?

KA:        Definitely, it’s always shifting. For a while, I was working at Gibson House up in North York and we talked a lot about toys and children’s activities there. And I think that conversation started exactly like you said, like the kind of a nostalgic of it: ‘Look at these are the games of our past.’ But I always used that as a way of asking the students, ‘hey, what’s the big gift this Christmas?’ So I could use that with the next group to say, ‘Oh, this is the…. hatchimals of the past’ just to make that connection for them.

Or another example, in my programs, I’d be talking about Jenny Lind singing at St. Lawrence Hall. And, of course, to the students I’m like, “Jenny Lind! The Swedish Nightingale!”

SC:        Oh, right! The Swedish Nightingale! [Laugh]

KA:        And so for a while, I’m was like, ‘she’s the Britney Spears of her day.’ Now, if I say that to a kid today, they’re like ‘Britney who?’ [Laugh]

SC:        Yeah! I was just thinking, that’s an old reference!

KA:        Yes, I know! I’ve been here a while using that one!

It’s always kind of updating in our interpretation, but you can do it for less frivolous topics too.

I do talk about the cholera outbreak often. If I’m doing walking tours, we go to St. James’ Park and they had the cholera burial grounds behind there. And so I’d be talking about what that experience is like, and kids, they love that kind of gore and grossness of it. Sometimes I really lay it on real thick, unless we’re just doing it right after lunch or something. But now, talking about that will be a lot harder because, if the news is correct, these kids are might have somebody in their family who had suffered from a big pandemic or medical disaster that has affected whole communities. And so I’m not going to approach the cholera  history in the same, like, gross out sort of way.

Although I say that, like I said, I’d been here forever, so we went through that same thing when we were talking about cholera, oh, how many years ago, when there was an outbreak in Haiti. And you know, Toronto is still a city of immigrants. So I was had kids in my programs who had close connections with Haiti. So it was in these moments when you think about where your audience is coming from, for sure.

SC:        You know, that’s interesting that you say that, and I really appreciate you bringing that up. It actually hasn’t come up in the conversation before. In an academic paper I presented, I was saying how I went to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC, and I was standing in line to see Emmett Till’s coffin – which is an amazing artifact that they have. I was standing behind a group of five students. Three of them were white students, one of them looked like a South Asian student who may have been a first-generation American, and then another student was African-American. And in the paper I was saying how all five of those students are going to be dealing with this topic so history differently – so what experience do we ensure is held and is safest in the teaching of it?

And I think that for you highlighting that, ‘yeah, I talked about Cholera, but then I had to realize I was connecting with students in ways that I didn’t realize and I had to like figure out how that works,’ I think in — being thoughtful about that affect of that teaching is really useful. So thank you for that. Because I think too when we get back, – “back” right? Whatever that looks like – anxieties are going to be so, so high and that we really need to be thoughtful about the different ways people come to topics.

KA:        Yes. Yes, when we’re thinking about history, and especially with topics that draw such a clear line to what’s going on today, you’re talking about what happened then but you’re also talking about what happened next as well, right?

You are playing a big part in the students’ mind, like how do they think about what is happening now, with that knowledge of what happened then and what happened next back then, if you see what I mean.

SC:        Yeah. Like these moments in history have different threads from it and those threads don’t lead to the present, or they all lead to the present, but they don’t take the same route for everyone, right? We have to kind of acknowledge that.

So that then leads to my next question about imagining a new ‘we’. So I like to argue that it can be very easy for people to say like, ‘this is Canadian history and this is Other.’ And that one way that we need to build a more transformative, meaningful, and inclusive version of the future is to think of that as the past as these increasing circles of inclusion. And I have been wondering how or what this might look different when we get ‘back’ or during this time. Does imagining change? Does a ‘we’ change? Do you think we will imagine a new ‘we’, or we should be imagining a new ‘we’, differently during or after this moment?

KA:        Oh, I definitely think so. I have been working with our board here on our strategic plan and looking at our big vision. Every time it comes time to renew that plan, we go back to our original mission statement and our original mandate and think about whether it still applicable: Is it time to change this? It is time to expand it?

And you’re exactly right, we’re a young-ish museum. We were established in the 1980s, but there was still a lot of that kind of nostalgic. Like, our mission statement is about looking at the history of communication in the Town of York and early city, so that’s a very short period of time. And also the postal history up until the 1850s – again, it’s a very short period of time. It doesn’t say anything about whose experience it is, and this is something that they weren’t thinking in the ‘80s because, like you say, they were thinking a pioneer in a funny hat that everybody would have known who they’re thinking of, and so it wasn’t really explicit.

I think the problem right now, even before this happened, was that we understand that that’s what they were thinking back then. We understand when this museum was set up, whose stories they were telling. And I think now it’s time to expand that because we still have, if you look at the makeup of the community that we’re serving, it’s really similar to the experience of the community that was here in the 1830s, and we haven’t been telling all of those stories. We’ve been telling the accepted pioneer the stories that we’ve been told for so long. So I’m looking at this pandemic period as an excuse to expand that vision, or expand that mandate, a little bit and tell different stories.

SC:        Yes! I think that the history of communication can really help us explore the communication between and amongst cultures. I don’t just mean like racial or cultural cultures, but like a variety of different types of culture.

And I think of a Black Creek Pioneer Village, for example, where there is a house representing someone who was Scottish, and Irish, and English, and German and we can talk about how these are still these cultural differences even when everyone is white. I think that you wanting to expand who we talk about in the ‘we’ of your museum, well, I’m really excited to see what that looks like. When and how that gets developed.

KA:        Even before the pandemic we have items in our collection, some of which we’ve only just acquired in the last year or so that tell, like I say, the stories of these people of the early town that don’t often get told a lot.

Here in this neighborhood, we had experiences of the Irish who were escaping famine, we have the stories of an awful lot of black entrepreneurs who set up shop here, as well as the story that kind of we’ve been telling so far, which is of the dozen or so names that we can know – the wealthy guys who were creating all the jobs.

SC:        So often people will say “Oh, well, those people weren’t in the past.” And it’s like: do we actually know their stories to say that? They might not be in history, but they certainly were in the past. Do we know their histories? Do we look for them? Do we have the artifacts and the records to show? Do we have the oral histories that show? So it’s awesome that your collection is includes some of this.

KA:        Yes. The nice thing about being a postal museum is a lot of stuff is written down.

SC:        Right! Of course!

Kat, this has been so amazing. This has been a really great and invigorating talk, and such a wonderful way to end the week. Before we say goodbye, do you want to talk about how people can support your work at the Toronto’s First Post Office?

KA:        I certainly do. That would be fantastic. So our website is townofyork.com. And at the bottom of that page, you can find a nice, big red support Donate Now button, which is a really quick and lovely way to support us.

But even more than that, we love expanding our community. So right beside that, there’s a Join Our Mailing List link. If you sign up there, you’ll hear about all of our activities, whether they’re virtual or in person, fingers crossed, and all our updates as we go forward into this unknown.

SC:        I have always just loved the work that you all do at the Toronto’s First Post Office. I’m so glad that we were able to talk about it and share this work today. This has been such a great talk. Thank you again.

KA:        Thank you, Sam, and that it’s good to talk to you.