Showing 2 results

Archival description
Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer. Office of the Camp Wardens fonds Series
Print preview View:

Expansion of the ritual

The series contains primarily correspondence with Camps Two through Nine, much of it dealing with the matter of verifying candidate credentials from different jurisdictions. There is also some correspondence of a social nature related to the establishment of authorities and Camp Wardens in new jurisdictions. The system of record keeping by Camp appears to have stopped in 1954, after which correspondence pertaining to the Camps may be found in the individual correspondence files in series 5. Arrangement is by Camp number, followed by the records pertaining to discussions of expanding the Ritual to the United Kingdom, India and the United States.

Camp Ten records pertain to a proposed camp in Ottawa, which was never established. Camp Ten, when it was established, became the camp for the Université Laval in Québec City in 1956. Camp Twelve was established by Carleton University in Ottawa in 1958. The B1995-0040 accession includes one file of material, from 1978-1987, related to the expansion of the “Links” programme of the Order of the Engineer organization, based in the United States. The records for Camp Five contain an example of an early iron ring.

Correspondence

The correspondence series follows three distinct ordering systems. Those files that were separated as Haultain’s personal correspondence are placed at the front of the series (Box 006) and arranged in chronological order. The “personal” designation appears to have been imposed on the records by the rearrangement of Edith Birkett (see Series 8). Also included in this series are some miscellaneous Haultain correspondence files on a variety of topics, including the Ritual, and some personal correspondence that was filed with the Ritual records.

Boxes 007 through 009 are arranged chronologically and include correspondence between the Wardens and the Camps, some committee correspondence and general Kipling Ritual correspondence. The alphabetical arrangement appears to have been mostly applied following Birkett’s arrangement of the Kipling Ritual files and includes significant correspondence with Camp and Corporate Secretaries and Wardens including Norman Parkinson, Louis Trudel, Robert Marshall and Thomas Hogg. These letters are arranged alphabetically (Boxes 009 through 012).

In later accessions the records are mostly arranged in chronological order and are interspersed with various attachments such as receipts and meeting minutes. Largely these records contain the details of the activity of the office of the Camp One Secretary. For correspondence with the other Camp secretaries see also Series 7. Files (07) and (09) in B1982-0023/006 include early examples of the hand-hammered iron rings.