Last year Gilda Koenig, a potential donor, approached me at the Salmon Arm Museum at RJ Haney Heritage Village with the offer of a switchboard from the Salmon Arm Motor Hotel. I knew right away she was talking about the MOHO - built in the 1960s – the landmark that replaced the old hospital by Little Lake. The potential donor was a retired Okanagan Telephone, BC Tel, and Telus employee. She was living in Vernon and her switchboard was taking too much space in her garage. She’d...

Archives volunteers Rosemary Wilson and Lise Ouimet attended a workshop held at the Ursula Surtees Conservation this fall. They went with the right attitude. Who wants to drive to Kelowna at five in the morning? The two packed up and went the night before, checking into a nice hotel. It was a girl’s night out. I suspected there might be a bottle of French wine to share in the evening. The women did not disappoint: , they went to a pub and had a beer with supper. No expenses paid! The...

Jade Tomma and I attended the Truth and Reconciliation ceremony at Salmon Arm’s   Jackson Campus on Friday, September 30. It was a fitting day. It was Jade’s last day at the Salmon Arm Museum. She’d been hired on the Get Youth Working Program to design a layout and create the text for a permanent exhibit in the gallery of the Montebello building. The exhibit, Knowing the Land Beneath Our Feet , is to be an introduction to the story of Secwepemc people. Jade has been...

Working at a museum is not boring. How many people can say that they helped create an exhibit about their culture? In the first week of July, my first task was to learn how to accession artifacts, then to photograph all of the First Nations artifacts.   Later I was to link all the photos to the Access database; this would allow the photos to pop up with the record when someone is researching it. I felt like I was helping the people in the future using the database by providing...

As a volunteer in the Archives, I offered to write a blog for Deborah Chapman. For the past two years, I have been describing and arranging archival materials, creating fonds that will be accessed by future researchers. In this time I have worked on a variety of materials from:  local women’s institutes, an early hospital collection, a school parent advisory, and several local individuals. Currently I am working on a very large file related to R. Turner & Sons Ltd. This firm...

I had a lovely visit this month. Janet Bradley, granddaughter of Mah Yick, came to Salmon Arm from Ontario after reading my blog about the opening of the Mah Yick Laundry. Janet was on a mission. She wanted to see the museum exhibit about her grandfather, reconnect with Judy Tweeddale Birkhiem - the daughter of a friend she last saw in 1964,  see her niece Amanda Miller, and visit the Springer cabin on the Shuswap where her family celebrated her sister's 16th birthday. She also...

We were in a party mood. The Museum’s annual gala took place on June 24th  - a Friday. The weather was iffy. A hundred of us gathered for the occasion. The audience was people who helped with the two new exhibits and the construction of the Montebello. We launched the online exhibit Flight from the Flames and opened the new exhibit “It’s laundry day every day – the story of Mah Yick’s Chinese Hand Laundry.  We were also celebrating the locking...

The month has flown. The park opened May 11 th with a new exhibit in place. The buildings were freshly cleaned and set up for the season. On sunny days, many tourists walk in to see what we are all about. It seems like the season, like spring, has come early this year. The Montebello project continues. The footings for the boardwalk were poured early in June.   Integrity began working on the roof. The building will be close to lock up stage soon. Amidst the sound of...

Discovering a story sorting the laundry...

R.J. Haney Heritage Village General Manager Susan Mackie handed me a catalogue of door hardware recently. Her instructions were to pick out the door handles for the Montebello building ASAP. Why? If the project was to be completed to lock up, doors for the project needed to be constructed soon, so the knobs had to be chosen right away. The manufacturer, Dale Widdifield at Windowland, planned to cut the holes for the knobs and locks in his workshop, before the doors were installed. He needed to...