Ryan Cummins was born September 8, 1997 in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada to a family of five. At age four his family moved to Riverside, California, United States where he would attend Benjamin Franklin Elementary School (2003 - 2010), Amelia Earhart Middle School (2010 - 2012), and Martin Luther King Jr. High School (2011 - 2015). After completing high school, during which he worked as a life guard for the City of Riverside on a seasonal basis, he moved back to Ontario to attend the University of Waterloo for his undergraduate degree. Beginning in 2015 and graduating in 2020, he received a Political Science degree with a specialization in International Relations, as well as an Honours Arts and Business degree. Cummins also graduated from the co-op program at the University of Waterloo, and worked at a variety of public and private organizations, including a gun-holster and car parts factory (2016 and 2017), the University of Waterloo's Special Collections and Archives (2018), and the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (2019). After graduation, Cummins would be briefly employed at a Zehrs grocery store in Waterloo (2020) before moving to Ottawa to work for Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Canada as a Web Analyst (2021). After completing his work contract, Cummins briefly attended the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs as part of their Intelligence Program before leaving due to moral conflict with the program (2021 - 2022). While working again for the federal government at Women and Gender Equality Canada (2022 - current), Cummins applied for and was accepted by the University of Toronto's iSchool in the Archives and Records Management program, where he still attends (2024 - current).
Faith Moir was born in Ottawa, Canada in 2001, and was raised by a single mother. Her family was very active in Riverside United Church, and she participated in the church choir and volunteered with events put on by the church, though she no longer identifies with Christianity.
She did not leave Ottawa until attending university, where she went to Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. During her tenure at Acadia University, she originally intended to attain a Bachelor's Degree in English, though in her second year changed her major to History. During this time, she was a member of the Acadia Film Society, the Acadia History Club, and she also worked as a Collections Research Intern at the Acadia University Art Gallery located on campus. Most of her academic interests fall under the broad categories of Gender and Sexuality Studies, Women Studies, and Medieval Studies.
She graduated with her BA in History with Minors in Classics and Material Culture in 2023, after which she returned to Ottawa for a year.
In 2024, Faith was accepted into the Combined Degree Program at the iSchool under the University of Toronto, and she is now currently working on attaining her Masters of Information and Masters of Museum Studies. She hopes to become a curator or archivist after graduation.
Faith volunteers with several organizations. She worked as a volunteer receptionist at the Textile Museum of Canada, volunteers online with the Goulbourn Museum, and works with the Out of the Cold Foundation.
Faith has been working on several creative writing endeavours, including poetry, short stories, and the drafts of one novel. Other creative endeavours she pursues include digital photography and digital illustration.
Rae Zhang (b. 1996) is currently pursuing her Master of Information degree with dual concentration in Information Systems Design and Archives Management at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Information. Her academic and professional work focuses on developing user-friendly digital preservation systems for archival institutions.
Born and raised in Henan, China, Zhang attended the International School of Qiushi (ISQS), where she earned Student of the Year honors in both 2012 and 2013. She also won the first place in the school's 2013 Creative Showcase.
In 2014, Zhang began her post-secondary education at the University of Alberta as an international student. After facing challenges with cultural adjustment and enduring severe depression, Zhang withdrew from the University of Alberta after six months of study. She spent time in Los Angeles with family before returning to Canada in 2015. Re-enrolling at the University of Alberta, she pursued a major in Art History with a minor in Art and Cultural Management. Zhang later transferred to MacEwan University, earning her Diploma in Art and Cultural Management in 2019. Her practicum at the Royal Alberta Museum in 2019, where she managed public education collections, first sparked her interest in records management.
After graduation, Zhang developed her professional skills through client service roles at the Bank of Montreal while establishing her permanent residence in Canada (2020-2021). In 2022, she enrolled in the University of Toronto's Bachelor of Information program, gaining interdisciplinary expertise in UX/UI design, cultural technology, and data science.
During her Bachelor of Information program, Zhang completed a practicum at the Provincial Archives of Alberta (PAA) as an archives assistant. Having a chance to work directly with archival materials, she recognized the sector is facing a transition from paper to digital, and archies is looking for more accessible solutions for managing digital records. This work experience directly informed her current graduate research focus on developing user-centered archival systems that address contemporary digital preservation challenges.
Beyond her academic and professional pursuits, Zhang maintains active interests in fencing, tennis, and golf, and has been involved in animal rescue advocacy efforts in China.
Heather Kenny was born in Toronto, Ontario, on June 15th, 2001, to Hai Yen T. Tran and Andrew Kenny. From 2015 to 2019, she attended high school at North Toronto C.I., and became known amongst her circles as an active photographer and continued the hobby throughout her life. From 2019 to 2024, Kenny attended McMaster University and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in History and Anthropology. In the year following her degree, she worked at Northbridge Insurance until she began her degree for a Master of Information Science in Archives and Records Management at the University of Toronto in 2024. In 2024, she began participating in multiple book clubs and often heavily annotated physical book copies. The same year, she also took to journaling and digital scrapbooking. Heather continued her education until she passed on March 15th of 2025 outside of Claude T. Bissell Building, Toronto.
history
Yoon Kyung Kim was an author and Japanese language instructor at the University of Toronto, living between 1989 and 2024. Born in Seoul, Korea, Kim moved to Vancouver, B.C. with her family in 2004. Kim attended the University of British Columbia, earning a B.A. in English and psychology in 2012. From summer 2009, Kim started to travel widely whenever she was able, and left impressions of the places she visited in fictional works, nonfiction prose, illustrations, and photographs. Kim moved to Toronto in 2013 and pursued an M.A. degree in East Asian studies at the University of Toronto, studying the politicization of court poetry in medieval Japan. After earning the M.A. in 2015, Kim went on to teach the Japanese language at the Department of East Asian studies in 2015, but gave up her post in 2017 to focus on writing. During the pandemic, her travellogues with illustrations gained popularity and international recognition. Kim went back to studying in 2022 and pursued an M.I. degree in archiving and records management at the University of Toronto. She died November 11, 2024. Kim is best known for her novel “Pen-Man-Ship,” an interpretation of the Korean folk tale “Keum-o sinhwa” in the contemporary Canadian context, “The Pelican Pilot,” and “Midnight Letters from Around the World,” a collection of illustrated travellogues.
Born January 1st, 1995 in Markham, David Slipetz grew up north of Toronto in Newmarket, ON. Here he attended Notre Dame Catholic Elementary School and Sacred Heart Catholic High School. He lived between Singapore and Malaysia in the summers of 2009 - 2012 during the summers of high school with his father that worked abroad. In 2012 he began his degree at McMaster University studying Anthropology. He lived and studied abroad in Japan for the school year of 2016 - 2017. He continued his studies of Anthropology with a focus on archaeology and participated in two academic archaeological expeditions during the following summers in Italy and Greece respectively. Upon return, he graduated with his degree in Honours Anthropology in 2018. He returned to graduate studies in 2024 as a Master's Graduate Student at the iSchool of University of Toronto studying Archives & Records Management & Museum Studies in the Combined Degree Program.
David Slipetz also travelled extensively. Living abroad for multiple months to years at a time. In 2022 he travelled to New Zealand and Australia where he lived for a year abroad on a Working Holiday Visa. After this year abroad he moved to Portugal in 2023 to partake in another Working Holiday Visa. As David extensively travelled around the world for his personal, professional and academic life he built a substantial photographic record. It appears that photography acted as an avenue of documentation and an artistic outlet for David which marked the beginning of his career in travel photography. As such, much of the fonds consists of the records of David's travel, photography and as persistent representations of the activities he engaged with.
Victoria Kwok was born in Hong Kong on February 5, 1969, to a first-generation family from Chaozhou, Guangdong. From 1987 to 1990, she attended the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) for her B.A. in Religious Studies and Italian Studies. Her year abroad in Siena, Italy in her undergraduate programme sparked her interest in food. Following her M.A. in Food Studies (1991-1993) at the University of Toronto (UofT), she completed an Italian cuisine chef training programme in the Scuola di Arte Culinaria from 1993 to 1995.
After working as a chef in Palermo, Italy, she returned to Hong Kong and held a research position at the University of Hong Kong from 2005 to 2015. During this time, her interest shifted from Italian cuisine to the food history of Hong Kong. In 2013, "A History of Cha Chaan Teng" was published.
In 2016, she migrated to Toronto and earned her PhD at the UofT in East Asian Studies (2016-2021), specialising in the Cantonese food culture in diasporic communities. She is a researcher at the same institution where she continues her food history research.