If you want to learn more about something, research it.
That’s the motto of first-year History student Ellie Street. A forward thinker with a keen sense of initiative, Ellie has taken her learning beyond the classroom and into the archives.
Last year, Ellie was on the bus when she picked up the paper and began reading an article about a burial site underneath the old library on Halifax’s Spring Garden Road. Ellie was so captivated by the article that she missed her stop. Since then, she has traveled to many archives across Halifax to find out more about the topic, and began conducting extensive research on a wide variety of historical events and happenings.
“I’m an avid historian. We wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for what happened behind us,” she says.
Piquing her curiousity
Ellie’s curiosity about history was evident early on in her life. As a child, she recalls burying her mother’s jewelry in the backyard. “I would go back and pretend it was this Egyptian mummified finger or something,” she explains, “like I found the lost treasure of Atlantis.”
Around the same time, Ellie had shocked her parents when she effortlessly made deductions about the Titanic’s sinking. “I loved the Titanic and I figured out with no prior education that the Titanic couldn’t have crashed into the iceberg if it hadn’t lit the last two boilers,” she says.
Ellie, who eventually wants to go into museum curatorship, recalls a memorable trip to a science museum in England with her father. “I loved it and that’s when I knew I wanted something to do with museums.”
Well into her teenage years, Ellie’s love for history never faded. For her 16th birthday, her family bought her a year’s subscription to National Geographic — a dream gift for a young history fanatic.
Discovering Halifax
After moving to Canada from England when she was a child, Ellie found herself in Newfoundland and New Brunswick before finally settling in Halifax, where she chose to attend Dalhousie.
Following the Spring Garden burial site project that jumpstarted her historical fascination, the bulk of Ellie’s research endeavors have continued to be about Halifax based events. “I just love learning about the town that I live in,” she says. Â
Ellie’s research topics have included in-depth exploration into poorhouses in Canada, the Sacred Heart school in downtown Halifax and Louisa Collins, a farm girl from Dartmouth in the early 1800s. The topics Ellie explores are usually sparked by conversations introduced in her classes.
“When I moved to Canada, I thought [schools] would be very biased to Canadian history. But what I love is it’s not. I’ve taken an introduction to European History, they have Arabic History, Ancient Studies and so much more. You can pick and choose and I just think it’s fantastic,” exclaims Ellie.
Ellie conducts the majority of her research at the Public Archives of Nova Scotia and the pilipiliÂţ» Archives and Special Collections in the Killam Memorial Library.
“I go to the archives at least three times a week,” she explains. “And I research two out of the three days that I go there.”
The Victoria General Hospital is the next research project on Ellie’s list. She is eager to get researching, as the hospital was previously used as a psychiatric hospital over a century ago. Ellie hopes to continue discovering more about the history of the city over her next three years at pilipiliÂţ».
“I know what I eventually want to do. It’s getting there that’s the fun part.”