An exhibition opening later this month in the John M. Kelly Library will take a close look at the 100-year history of the Scarboro Foreign Mission Society (SFM), a religious community based in east-end Toronto which engaged in missionary work around the world.
With a dramatic decline in vocations, the order decided in 2017 that it would accept no new members, moving the remaining priests and lay members to Presentation Manor, a nearby retirement residence.
Soon after funding the creation of the Diploma in Interfaith Dialogue program at St. Mike’s, the SFM returned to St. Mike’s as a possible home to receive their archives. This became reality in 2022 when the full archives chronicling the history of the order was donated to the Kelly Library’s Special Collections. While the archival materials have already been accessed by researchers, this is the first time any of the materials will be on display for the general public.
Kelly Library Processing Archivist Francesca Rousselle, who is overseeing the exhibition, likens creating a historical display to telling a story, framing it in a way that will appeal to academics as well as other community members. This exhibition, she notes, explores the evolution of justice-oriented mission work from the Society’s early efforts at poverty-alleviation, the anticipation and response to the Second Vatican Council, and the subsequent expansion of ministries focusing on economic, political, interfaith, and ecological justice.
The exhibition will include a general timeline of the order’s activities and, using the library’s six new exhibition cases, display a variety of materials documenting the work undertaken by the Scarboro ministries around the world. Highlights include important copies of the Scarboro Missions Magazine, photos and internal correspondence.
“The exhibit will have great appeal to anyone familiar with the SFM and their work, but it will also be of interest to a much broader audience,” says James Roussain, the Kelly Library’s William D. Sharpe Chief Librarian and Director of Special Collections. “For example, those interested in 20th-century Chinese history before the Cultural Revolution will find plenty to intrigue them, he says.
The arrival of the SFM materials further cements St. Michael’s as the preeminent location for research into religious communities in Canada, Roussain adds. The collection joins several other archival materials and collections housed at the Kelly, ranging from the Henri J.M. Nouwen Research Archive & Special Collections and the G.K. Chesterton Archival Collection through to the Sheila Watson fonds and the L’Arche Daybreak fonds.
The archival materials and collections housed at the Kelly Library offer students an extraordinary opportunity to conduct hands-on research with primary sources, notes Roussain.
“When students get the chance to work with original documents it creates a curiosity that can grow and develop and be applied in various ways throughout their lives,” he says.
The Golden Rule: Social Justice and the Scarboro Foreign Mission Society opens January 21 with a lecture delivered at 6 p.m. by Father Robert E. Carbonneau, C.P., Ph.D., Research Fellow of the Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History at Boston College and Archivist of the Passionist China Collection. The talk, titled ‘Reflections on History to Shape the Future, 1918- 2025: The Scarboro Mission Archives at St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto,’ will offer a reflection on the importance of the Scarboro Mission Archives to China, 1918-1949, to an understanding of the Scarboro Missions of contemporary Chinese society.
The lecture will be followed by a tour of the exhibit and a reception. Please RSVP to attend.