Exploring the material culture of medical artifacts in the Oblate Collection

How can we explore object biographies when a collection has relied heavily on the donor’s narrative? This article uses three artifacts to explore the history of Ingenium’s ‘Oblate Collection’, a group of 282 medical artifacts used at L’Hôpital de L’Assomption in Grand Falls, New Brunswick, on the land of the Wolastoqiyik people. The hospital was opened in 1952 by the newly founded Secular Institute, a branch of the Oblate Missionaries of Mary Immaculate who ran 48 residential schools across Canada. Our catalogue information on the ‘Oblate Collection’ relies largely on the narrative from the donors themselves, primarily, two documents written by one of the nurses, Fabienne Rinfret, who elaborates on life working in the hospital and how the artifacts were used by the staff. Our files lack stories of patient experiences or a fuller, more inclusive sense of their local context including connections to Indigenous people and land. In order to tell a more well-rounded story of the collection, and fill out missing historical dimensions we can also look to the artifacts themselves through material culture readings and further research. Additional work with this collection will hopefully bring in more ways of knowing and different perspectives on these artifacts.