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Samantha E Thompson

@harchivist.bsky.social
509 followers 336 following 1.1K posts

Brit-Canadian archivist-librarian, government records and local history museum staffer, trad-classical musician, post-academic philosophy PhD (on Augustine), and other hyphenated things. Can't help it: so much to learn.

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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Michaelmas bee
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
He and his English wife Eliza Field Jones were remarkable people. More: www.biographi.ca/en/bio/jones...
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
For my birthday I visited the grave of one of my favourite historical figures, the Rev. Peter Jones (Kahkewaquonaby). The inscription is now hardly legible. You can make out the word Ojibway and part of his name. The original wording may be in some archival records I catalogued.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Two of multiple tornado warnings via my phone yesterday (including of an actual tornado?). Looking for a country I can blame for this.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
Vast Lake Ontario was still as a pond this morning.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
Big loss to the folk scene.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
St. Jude's, Oakville, Ontario.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
Yeah me too.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
Flowers from archival colleagues. 🥲
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 14/02/2026
Old piano for sale at the Salvation Army Thrift Store. Somehow very touching.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 04/02/2026
Worst time of winter and and a long way to go yet. Brits and their snowdrops can buzz off.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 18/01/2026
Pressing tofu. Yes I still have a dictionary. Sometimes I even read it, not that you'd know by my spelling.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 17/01/2026
I am sad that this is so personally familiar.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 11/01/2026
Oh well.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 04/01/2026
Just finished processing new purchases for the parish library. (I tend to emphasize accessible books the public library likely won't have.) I miss working with books. They're so mellow compared to archival records which resist corralling at every turn.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 03/01/2026
I actually have a problem with self-disgust in this regard. I don't know Thérèse (of Lisieux) near as well as C. S. Lewis (of whom I'm a real fan) but this by her helps me on this front.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 24/12/2025
A somber motet for tonight. Apt for the times.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 24/12/2025
My Hudson's Bay biscuit tin from just a few years ago. Too nice to throw out.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 23/12/2025
We don't get many manicules in this archive. Small Christmas present.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 30/11/2025
The night is far gone; the day is near.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
I'm not used to seeing actual books in a clinical context anymore.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 09/11/2025
Random church shot. Embroidered chasuble draped on the altar rail during preparation. Beautiful work, almost always by women.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 08/11/2025
"Please do not use Yamaha recorders for any other purposes besides musical performance."
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 08/11/2025
Got an ALTO Yamaha recorder at a thrift store for $2. Not a professional grade instrument but all Yamahas are good. It can be dunked in the sink to clean it. Now I just need time and energy to learn the wretched F fingerings. Tenor was easier for an ex-flutist.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 23/10/2025
Monkey!
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
This is a copy of a death mask decorating the county jail. The fellow's head popped off as a result of the only public hanging in the county. (That really happened.) Haunting began when the mask was removed and stopped when it was put back (legend).
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
At Oxford County (Ontario) for regional archivists' meeting and ran into some great folklore. The old county building (ca. 1890) sports random monkey grotesques. Legend has it they represent ten councillors the builders disliked or are the result of a curse.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 21/10/2025
Lovely little stone walking bridge near Hamilton, Ontario. My city would have this down in a hot second.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 18/10/2025
??
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 12/10/2025
Anglican church cupboard is 50% carbs.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 30/09/2025
Unexpected and moving art installation in the rock garden pools at Hamilton's Royal Botanical Gardens, presumably for the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
White canoes floating on a pool in a park with waterlily and willow trees.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 27/09/2025
Fall raspberry leaves.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
Did anyone else's grandparents pass around the boiled sweets on any car trip over 30 minutes? My dentist would hate my daily commute for the last decade...
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 26/09/2025
Two bridges.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 22/09/2025
Autumn
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 21/09/2025
Happy birthday to Gustav Holst and me. I'd never looked at the score for the planets until I found it via @archive.org. Even if you don't read music you might be able to tell this is the beginning of "Mars." Music has a look as well as a sound. Inspiration for John Williams' Star Wars themes imo.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 20/09/2025
Okay, I laughed.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 20/09/2025
That tree is growing Chicken of the Woods again. It skipped last year. Going to pick it younger this time. Maybe cook it for my birthday.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 19/09/2025
Doesn't have quite the same ring.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
When flying was a Big Deal.
Crowd of well-dressed passengers waving goodbye in front of a Canadian Pacific jetliner in about the early 1960s.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 14/09/2025
The wounded surgeon plies the steel... Hic Spiritus Est, a sculpture of nails by David Partridge in the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Toronto. Holy Cross Day.
A sculpture of nails hammered into the wall of different lengths in curving lines to form the figure of a tree or cross.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 13/09/2025
Deep called unto deep.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 07/09/2025
I know it's less than nothing in the grand scheme of things but I found a bit of blue beach glass.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 07/09/2025
I got blocked by someone on here! The only person who blocked me on Twitter (as far as I know) was the fox-torturing lawyer.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 06/09/2025
Slight crepuscular rays this morning.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
Book store display of apocalyptic literature. (The passcode for the store washroom is 1984#.) @allistert.bsky.social
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
But wait there's more.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
Toronto
Large blue statue of a creature with the head of a man and a face on the end its tail blowing a horn in front of an apartment building.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
Page 29 3/4 was a corker.
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Samantha E Thompson @harchivist.bsky.social · 01/09/2025
A local historian tells me they were horrible employers. Good riddance and Happy Labour Day!
A broken piece of terra cotta sewer pipe with part of the company stamp still readable (National Sewer Pipe Company) with the logo of a pyramid.
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