COVID-19 Community Archive

For Saskatchewan

We are creating a public archive where stories and data about Saskatchewan’s COVID-19 pandemic can be preserved for future generations. As we try to move past the pandemic, we want to ensure that it doesn’t become another forgotten pandemic like the 1918 flu. The COVID-19 Archive wants to hear the stories of community organisations, frontline workers, and health care providers who made personal sacrifices to deliver services to people across Saskatchewan.

Share your story

Why does this matter?

This pandemic has exposed gaps in our health care system and social safety net. It has also become the first truly digital pandemic, revealing the power of social media to spread misinformation that undermines public health measures. Our goal is to gather stories from the people who worked on the frontlines of the pandemic or lived in vulnerable communities where the fallout of COVID-19 was magnified and felt in food insecurity, housing precarity, rising substance use and a mental health crisis. We are also preserving the digital legacy of this pandemic with tools from the Internet Archive.

An Archive for the People

Share your story with the Saskatchewan’s COVID-19 Community Archive.

All the Pandemic News in One Place

Explore our open source Zotero Database where we have catalogued news stories about the pandemic in SK. Contact us for access.

Social Media & Misinformation

Learn about the link between medical misinformation and social media, part of
our partnership with Archives Unleashed and the Internet Archive.

A Visual Timeline of Health Policy

Follow a detailed timeline of Saskatchewan’s official health policies related to COVID-19.

Core Team

Erika Dyck

Professor and Canada Research Chair in the History of Health & Social Justice at the University of Saskatchewan

Erika helped to create the archive and has written several books exploring psychedelics and healthcare in Saskatchewan including A Culture’s Catalyst: Historical Encounters with Peyote and the Native American Church in Canada (2016). She is the Associate Director of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines in Canada.

Jim Clifford

Associate Professor, Department of History

Jim was inspired to create the archive after working on the social history of disease and public health in 1890s East London. He found very few sources from regular people and wanted to ensure the record of the current pandemic included a wider variety of voices. He is an expert on digital and environmental history.

Patrick Chassé

Research Officer, Department of History and SPHERU

Patrick is managing the Remember Rebuild SK project. He has a long-standing interest in the environmental health and the well-being of communities and a Phd in Environmental history. His current research explores how climate change is driving migration and malnutrition in peasant communities across Latin America.

Erin Matthews

Lead Interviewer, Department of History

Erin Matthews is a master’s student at the University of Saskatchewan and has been conducting oral history interviews for the Remember Rebuild project. Erin’s master’s thesis focuses on the discussion of “Spanish Influenza” in Saskatchewan newspapers during the pandemic of 1918 and the roles Saskatchewan women played in the public health effort.

Sarah Karp

Research Assistant, Department of History

Sarah Karp is an Undergraduate at the University of Saskatchewan currently pursuing a Bachelor of Arts Double Honours in History and Archaeology/Anthropology and a three-year B.A. in English concurrently.

Domenica Medina Sanchez

Undergraduate, Department of History (Summer 2022)

Domenica Medina is an ecuadorian student at the University of Saskatchewan. She is currently in her third year in Animal Bioscience. She has worked in research projects like "Women in Psychedelics" under Dr. Erika Dyck's supervision. She is currently a research assistant for the project Remember, Rebuild Saskatchewan: A covid-19 project.

Derek Cameron

PhD Candidate, History Department

A complete novice to coding before his PhD, he is interested in bringing digital history methods to the analysis of vaccine resistance and the COVID-19 Pandemic. Thanks to the Remember Rebuild project, Derek has been able to rapidly build out his knowledge of the tools and skills needed to interact with the terabytes of historical data in the web archive.

Research Team

WEB ARCHIVING

Craig Harkema, Co-director Digital Research Centre, University of Saskatchewan

Craig helped found the COVID-19 Archive in March 2020. He is developing digital scholarship services for the Usask. His research focuses on digitizing cultural heritage materials and providing ways to explore and interact with digital culture.

Tim Hutchinson, Assistant Dean, University Archives and Special Collections, University of Saskatchewan

Tim received his masters’ in archival studies from the University of Michigan. He has been an archivist at the University of Saskatchewan since 1997 and specializes in digital archives and digital preservation. He wants to ensure that the “born digital” records in the UASC collection are accessible to researchers in the long term.

Derek Matthews, PhD Candidate, Department of History, USask

Derek is exploring the history of vaccine hesitancy in Saskatchewan, drawing on the digital archive being created by Remember Rebuild. With support from Archives Unleashed, Derek has been able to rapidly build out his knowledge of the tools and skills needed to interact with the terabytes of historical data in the web archive.

John Yobb, University Library

Richard Oware, PhD Candidate, Department of History (Summer 2022)

Daniel Ha, Undergraduate, Department of History (Summer 2022)

INTERVIEWS AND HEALTH POLICY

Simonne Horwitz, Professor, History, University of Saskatchewan

Simonne came to Saskatchewan from Johannesburg, South Africa, via the University of Oxford where she did her D.Phil. She teaches African History and History of Medicine, focusing on health care, medicine, and gender in South Africa. Her passion is teaching and pedagogy and she strives to be role model for Queer students and those who are neurodiverse.

Helen Vandenberg, Associate Professor, College of Nursing, University of Saskatchewan (Regina)

Helen Vandenberg is an avid supporter of health history research and education in Canada. Her research interests relate to the history of hospitals, health systems, and nursing in Western Canada during the early twentieth century. She is past president of the Canadian Association of the History of Nursing.

Roslyn Compton, Associate Professor, College of Nursing, USask

Roslyn was an early participant in the COVID-19 Archive, drawing on her expertise in long term care to initiate interviews with people living in care situations and asking them about their experiences during the pandemic.

Michelle Stewart, University of Regina-Justice Studies, SPHERU

Michelle is an applied researcher with projects focus on the over-representation of Indigenous peoples in the justice and child welfare systems with attention to impacts of trauma, disability, colonialism, and systemic racism. She is the Project Lead for the Integrated Justice Program that delivers supports and services to Indigenous individuals through a consortium of community partners.

Tom McIntosh, SPHERU, International Studies, University of Regina

Sylvia Abonyi, SPHERU / Community Health & Epidemiology, USask

Charles Smith, St. Thomas More-Political Studies

Alex Wong, Physician

Scott Napper, VIDO-InterVac

Murray Mandryk, PostMedia

Partners

The success of this project relies on our community partners, who are providing insight on mental health, substance use, housing, and food security issues across the province. This work also would not be possible without generous Tri-Council funding.