Preserving the Legacy of Love Canal: University Archives Leads the Way

by HOPE DUNBAR

The University at Buffalo Libraries has unveiled a landmark exhibition, Toxic Archives: Voices from Love Canal, in Silverman Library. The exhibition, co-curated by University Archivist Hope Dunbar and Dr. Saguna Shankar of UB’s Department of Information Science, showcases the University Libraries’ role in preserving the extensive archival record of Love Canal, one of the nation’s most consequential environmental disasters.

More than a historical display, the exhibition demonstrates the transformative power of archives in shaping public memory, fostering education, and building community connections. For alumni and donors, it is also a reminder of how the generosity of UB graduates such as Dr. Penelope D. Ploughman has sustained the University Archives as a center of scholarly excellence and community engagement.

At the heart of the exhibition is the Penelope D. Ploughman Love Canal Collection, an archive that exemplifies the enduring impact of alumni contributions. Dr. Ploughman (PhD ’84, JD ’89), formerly an attorney for SUNY, first encountered Love Canal as a graduate student in sociology at UB. She joined Dr. Adeline Levine’s pioneering Love Canal Research Group in the late 1970s, immersing herself in a community on the front lines of an environmental crisis.

Armed with a camera, cassette recorder, and notebook, Ploughman documented residents’ struggles, attended meetings of the Love Canal Homeowners Association, and recorded the voices of women such as Lois Gibbs, whose grassroots leadership would become nationally recognized. 

Ploughman later recalled that experience as a “unique fieldwork opportunity” that changed her trajectory as both a scholar and an advocate. Her doctoral dissertation, The Creation of Newsworthy Events: An Analysis of Newspaper Coverage of the Man-Made Disaster of Love Canal (1984), analyzed the dynamics of media coverage and the ways local activism shaped national attention.

Years later, recognizing the enduring value of her research materials, she donated them to the University Archives in 2008. The donation included more than 600 photographic slides, manuscripts, clippings, and records of interviews — all painstakingly collected, transcribed, and preserved during her graduate years. Today, these items form the backbone of UB’s holdings on Love Canal, joining complementary collections such as the records of the Ecumenical Task Force and the Love Canal Area Revitalization Agency, as well as the Adeline Levine papers. Thanks to Ploughman’s foresight, UB holds the nation’s most comprehensive record of the disaster. 

The story of Love Canal is both local and national. Beginning in the 1940s, Hooker Chemical Co. buried more than 20,000 tons of toxic waste in a former canal bed in Niagara Falls. Decades later, several homes and an elementary school were built on the site. By the 1970s, residents began experiencing alarming health problems. Miscarriages, birth defects, and cancers increased as chemicals seeped into basements and yards.

The community mobilized, led largely by mothers who demanded government action. Their efforts led to the evacuation of hundreds of families and to the creation of the federal Superfund program in 1980.

Ploughman’s collection captures this history from the ground up. Her slides show abandoned houses with “Danger” signs posted on their doors, crowds gathered at meetings, community protests, and the quiet devastation of families leaving their homes behind. Her transcripts preserve the voices of ordinary residents describing illnesses, frustrations with officials, and the determination to fight for their children’s futures. Taken together, these documents convey both the trauma and resilience of a community forced into the national spotlight.

For the University Archives, preserving and providing access to these records is not a passive task. It requires careful stewardship, ethical decision-making, and active engagement with researchers, students, and the public.

In recent years, archivists at UB undertook a comprehensive redaction project to make sensitive oral history interviews from the Ploughman and Levine collections available for the first time. This multilayered process involved a graduate student from environment and sustainability, as well as two archivists. Together, they reviewed and redacted transcripts to protect privacy while preserving the substance of residents’ testimonies.

The redacted transcripts are now accessible as a standalone manuscript collection in the Archives’ reading room, striking a careful balance between transparency and confidentiality.

This work illustrates a broader point: archives are not static repositories but living institutions. By grappling with the ethical challenges of access, UB’s archivists have ensured that the voices of Love Canal residents can now inform new generations of students, scholars, and activists. 

The impact of these collections extends well beyond the exhibition. The University Archives has emerged as one of UB’s fastest-growing sites of student learning. Instruction sessions now span disciplines ranging from history and English to engineering and environmental studies, all of which have used the Love Canal archives.

Students are given hands-on engagement with original documents, photographs, and artifacts, learning to interpret primary sources and evaluate authorship, context, and preservation practices. These experiences develop critical thinking skills while underscoring the importance of archives in shaping knowledge.

Community members continue to find meaning in the collections as well. Local residents and activists have visited the University Archives exhibition to reconnect with their past, while filmmakers and journalists draw on the materials to keep Love Canal in public memory — most recently in the PBS documentary Poisoned Ground.

The exhibition Toxic Archives, which will be on display through July 2026, brings these audiences together, offering both a historical narrative and an exploration of archival ethics. By linking student learning with public engagement, the University Archives demonstrates how collections can serve scholarship, teaching, and community. 

The success of the Love Canal collections and the Toxic Archives exhibition reflects the ongoing importance of institutional stewardship. The preservation of fragile materials, the careful redaction of sensitive interviews, and the development of instructional uses for archival sources all require sustained resources and attention.

The University Archives has become a vital campus resource for teaching and research, supporting both the university community and the wider public. By safeguarding and interpreting the records of Love Canal, the University Archives ensures that this history remains accessible for future generations. In doing so, the archives continue to serve as both a scholarly resource and a community anchor, preserving memory while fostering critical engagement with the past.

Please consider supporting the University Archives. Your support sustains the acquisition, arrangement, preservation, digitization, and access to unique archival records, photographs, audio recordings.