Creepy Alberta! at the Peace River Museum

Every year, Archives Week takes place the first week of October, always with a different theme.

This year's chosen theme: Creepy Alberta! In the ‘spirit’ of Archives Week (no pun intended), we are inviting local residents to loan us their favourite ‘creepy’ artwork for inclusion in a temporary display. We want to see your wickedest homemade Halloween costumes, a ghostly landscape photo, or your very best paper mache cat. Both child and adult creations are welcome. During the month of October our visitors will vote for their favourites and the winner will receive a prize.
Artwork can be dropped off in person at the museum anytime before October 11.

A creepy photograph of unknown events at Vermilion Chutes
87.1492.48, gift of Jack O'Sullivan

1937 Peace River Fire Department



PRMA AR89.29.1, Gift of Charlie Briscoe

The 1937 Peace River Fire Department is seen here, posed with new equipment. Charles Briscoe, Ray Lahey, and Earl Lahey are the last three men in the back row (from centre to right). Earl Boyd is third on the left in the bottom row. The identity of the remaining men is unknown.

One of the inaugural steps taken by the newly minted Council for Peace River Crossing in October of 1914 was to establish a volunteer Fire Department. Armed with lanterns, buckets, ropes, axes, ladders and two chemical cylinders, the twenty-five volunteers who stepped forward to fill firemen’s boots defended the town from the very real threat of flames. Fires have ravaged Peace River several times over the years, including large blazes in 1915, 1932 and most significantly in 1962.

This year, the Peace River Fire Department celebrates their Centennial Year (1914-2014). Come learn more about the Fire Department and other historic centenaries in the Peace River History Gallery at the Peace River Museum, Archives and Mackenzie Centre.

The Waters Rise Again

Since Peace River Crossing was given village status in 1914, floods have been a frequent visitor. Coincidentally, Tuesday night’s flood occurred exactly one hundred years after Pat’s Creek flooded in 1914, killing a team of bay horses in the process. In addition to the floods of the 2000s, Peace River also flooded several times throughout the 20th Century. The following photos, from the archives, illustrate some of those occasions when Peace River has found itself under the rising waters.

1914

A Bay Team
 Pat's Creek Flood

x87.1521.35 : Gift of the Alexander [Mackenzie?] Historical Society

 

1923

Eric Piggott's Family
Possible Heart River Flood 

79.1075.19 : Gift of Barbara Crawford

1935

The Filling Station, Near Current CKYL Building
Pat's Creek Flood

77.801.56 : Gift of William Plaizier

1958

Building a Sandbag Barrier on Main Street
Pat's Creek Flood

87.1536.6 : Gift of the Peace River Record Gazette

1972

West Peace River Home in Flood Waters
Peace River Flood

72.482.f : Gift of Mrs. J. Mitchell

Artifact of the Week -1945 Valentine

Sent from the worst of times with the best of sentiments: little is known about this Valentine which was produced by the Salvation Army in 1945, and presumably sold to soldiers to send to their sweethearts back home.

PRMA, 00.023.250

This example bears the interior message, “to a very good friend with all good wishes –Jimmie” and a religious poem about parted lovers. The identity of Jimmie, his dear friend, and his fate in the war is lost to history. The front of the card bears a cartoon image of two cupids running an arrow through a heart. The card was found among the belongings of Peace River Resident Patricia Fishburne and donated to the museum in 2000.

PRMA, 00.023.250

Come see this item in person and many others featured in the Peace River Museum’s Valentine’s Day Cabinet Display, on now until the end of February.

Artifact of the Week – Photograph of WWI Recruits from Peace River

 

This photo, taken in 1914, depicts four Peace River Army recruits in crisp new uniforms. When Britain declared war on Germany in August of that year, public opinion held that the entire affair would be short-lived, and the boys would be home in time for Christmas. The optimistic expressions seen here reflect the attitudes of the time: war was still largely perceived as an adventurous opportunity and an excellent chance for young men to see the world.

73.550.27 Gift of Mrs. E. M. Blake

As the war dragged on over four long years, opinions began to change. The impact of trench warfare combined with modern technology was both unexpected and devastating. Newfangled machines like tanks and machine guns, scientific developments like mustard gas, and a disturbing malady known only as ‘shell shock’ sent many soldiers home with horrific and often incurable injuries. Others were not so lucky: more than sixty thousand Canadians lost their lives in the First World War. By the time the conflict ended in 1918, the idea of war as a romantic notion had literally been killed in action.

 

Roy Foote, seen on the far right, is 22 years old in this photograph. He died two years later in 1916, likely during the Battle of the Somme. His body was not recovered. Roy Foote is currently memorialized on the Vimy Ridge Memorial Monument in Pas de Calais, France.

The identity and fate of the other soldiers in the photograph is unknown.

 

 

Artifact of the Week – Silk-Embroidered French Greeting Card




"Poppy" Joe Newman Fonds, 73.561.X.1

Embroidered postcards are believed to have originated in Austria as early as 1903, but they gained their popularity and reached new artistic heights in the hands of the French. By 1907, France was a main producer of the cards, which were hand-stitched by Belgian and French women on strips of silk that were then incorporated into a cardboard backing. Embroidered cards became wildly popular during the First World War (1914-1919), when lonesome soldiers would purchase them as souvenirs to send to loved ones back home, or to keep as reminders of friendlier, cosier days while surrounded by the misery of the trenches.



Detail: 73.561.X.1

This example from the Peace River Museum and Archives is among the more elaborate embroidered card designs known to exist: the silk is styled in an envelope fashion, allowing the small, sentimental greeting to be tucked lovingly inside. The back of the card provides space for a postcard-style message. This particular card is in excellent condition and still retains the original brilliance and rich colours it would have displayed a hundred years ago. The identity of the sender (a woman named May) is now lost to history, but it is known that the card belonged to Joseph “Poppy Joe” Newman, who collected postcards while serving overseas in the First World War.



Detail: 73.561.X.1

The card likely originates from anywhere between 1912 and 1926. It will be on display at the Peace River Museum and Archives in December as part of the upcoming Holiday Exhibit.
 

Message on the back of the card reads:

Wishing you both a merry Christmas and the best of luck in the new Year. From May

2012 is here!

We hope everyone had a lovely holiday season and safe New Years!
The Museum is busily preparing and planning for our next year of exciting exhibits.

If you are looking for calendars to help plan your next year, the Museum has three different unique and historic options:

The Archives Society of Alberta has put together a 2012 calendar: Archives in Living Colour featuring colour photography from the collections of Archives across Alberta. Our own Archives is featured in December! This calendar is $5.To see some of these photographs as well as many others, please visit this year's online exhibit: Archives in Living Colour.

Soul of Canada has put together two lovely calendars, each with approximately 100 archival photographs and packed with research and information on Canada's Petroleum Pioneers or Canada's Work Horses. These calendars are $20 each.

Happy 224th birthday Louis Daguerre!

Google's homepage doodle for November 18th celebrates Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851) who invented one of the earliest forms of permanent photography, which he aptly named the Daguerreotype. Daguerre had been working with a partner, Nicéphore Niépce, to find a way of affixing an image seen through a lens onto a permanent surface. Niépce died in 1933, but Daguerre continued with their experiements and finally in 1839, he presented the first photographs to the French Académie des Sciences. (from: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dagu/hd_dagu.htm - accessed November 18, 2011)

In celebration of this groundbreaking invention, we are posting pictures of the daguerreotypes in our Archival collection. Unfortunately, we do not know who these two people are, but the photographs have been dated to ca. 1845. For more information on caring for daguerreotypes, you can visit the Daguerreotype Research Portal.

71.413.a1

71.413.a2

Happy Halloween from the Peace River Museum, Archives and Mackenzie Centre

This Halloween, we thought to share a photo from a fund-raising masquerade for the Irene Cottage Hospital in February of 1915. Have a safe and happy Halloween!


PRMA80.1137.1.55



New Gift Shop items: 8x10 Archival Prints

 

View from 12 Foot Davis Gravesite, ca. 1930s (PRMAx87.1521.57)



Our Gift Shop has printed a selection of beautiful 8x10 archival prints on fine art paper available for $15 (+gst) each. This price includes a plastic sleeve for safe keeping. These prints are perfect for gifts and for framing. Thumbnails of each print are pictured below.



D.A. Thomas, ca. 1920s (PRMA2008.043.002)

Peace River Train Station, ca. 1920s-1930s (PRMA73.564f)

Delivering mail from Peace River to Fort Vermilion by dogsled, 1908 (PRMA80.1137.1.45)

Main Street, Peace River, 1967 (PRMAAR93.1.160)

Peace River, ca. 1920s-1930s (PRMA81.1162.1)

Peace River, ca. 1920 (PRMA2008.056.003)

Threshing Bee at Gilbert Axford's farm, 1929 (PRMA68.128a)

Peace River's train bridge, ca. 1920s (73.564d)

Alberta Archives Week

This week is Alberta Archives Week! The first week in October is used to celebrate and promote Archives and what they do in a community.
We participate also in a yearly archives exhibit through the Archives of Society of Alberta. This year's theme is: Archives in Living Colour! The exhibit can be viewed here: http://www.archivesalberta.org/2011exhibit/index.html

There will also be small displays up at the Museum, Kits Office Supply, the Record Gazette and the Peace River Library.

For our promotion this year, we are chatting with businesses and organizations around our area about what the Archives does for them and how to go about donating records to the Archives. Our Archivist, Wendy Dyck, will be presenting to the Peace River Rotary, Peace River & District Chamber of Commerce, Berwyn Women's Institute, Grimshaw & District Chamber of Commerce and Mighty Peace Tourism Association. If your organization or business is interested in a presentation, please contact the Archives at 624-4261 or museum@peaceriver.net. Here are some highlights:

• The Peace River Archives acquires, organizes and makes available inactive records from various businesses and organizations in Town of Peace River, MD of Northern Lights, Northern Sunrise County, Clear Hills County, MD #135 of Peace and MD# 136 of Fairview. Inactive records are those which are no longer needed for day to day operations of a business or no longer need to be kept for legal reasons. To discuss your donation, please contact our Archives.

• The Peace River Archives is able to provide the following services:
• conservation
• consultations on storage, care and records retention
• research and project help

New Research Resources available online!

The Peace River Archives received a grant from the Archives Society of Alberta and the National Archival Development Program to hire a student this summer. This student handled many front end duties as well as entering the archival maps into our database to increase their accessibility.
The Archivist was then able to spend her time putting 8 new sets of records (fonds) online on the Archives Network of Alberta website, which brings our total to 16.

 

New records include:

• Alberta Historic Sites Service fonds
• This fonds covers a survey done in Peace River and surrounding areas of many of our major historic buildings and sites.
• Alexander Wallace fonds
• Alexander Wallace started the Wallace Drug Company, which later became the Hanna Drug Company.
• Hanna Family fonds
• Sam & Grace Hanna bought into the Wallace Drug Company and it became the Hanna Drug Company. Their son, Jim, was a World War II veteran.
• Dora Lloyd fonds
• Dora Lloyd was an early nurse and matron of the Irene Cottage Hospital in Peace River. This fonds focus on her time here.
• Jack O'Sullivan fonds
• Jack O'Sullivan owned, with his partner Ted Stigsen, O'Sullivan and Stigsen Company which freighted up and down the river until 1949 as well as operating trading posts in the region. This fonds includes a great deal of information on Jack's career on the river as well as his family.
• "Peace River" Jim Cornwall fonds
• "Peace River" Jim was a tireless promotor of the possibilities in thenorth, MLA for this area as well as operating boats on the river and many other activities in the north. This fonds includes, amongst other records, 3 photograph albums of trips through the Peace Region.
• Pearl MacRae fonds
• A collection of photographs of early Peace River.
• Stanley Lawrence fonds
• This fonds contains information on two generations of the Lawrence family, the Sheridan & Juey Lawrence family and their son, Stanley Lawrence and his family.

We thank the Archives Society of Alberta and the Government of Canada for their funding for this project.

Highlights of Our Collection

This photograph, from the Edward Whittaker fonds, shows the team of geologists who travelled north along through the Peace River region, the Northwest Territories, Saskatchewan and the Yukon between 1916 and 1921. This collection of beautiful photographs is available for researchers at the Peace River Archives.

More Highlights of our collection

These four fine, young officers of Peace River in the 1930s show off their bloodhound, Melody, who appears to be not cooperating for the shoot.

More Highlights of our collection

This photograph of Jack O'Sullivan and what is likely his son ranks high for it's adorable factor as well as the fact that O'Sullivan and Stigsen was one of the last boat companies to freight up and down the Peace River. Their company was the end of an era in river transportation.


For anyone interested in this era, the Museum Gift Shop has a lovely little book, "Where Go the Boats?" by Evelyn Hanson for $5 that summarizes wonderfully, the boats on the Peace River from 1792-1952.

Archival Photograph Highlights

Whew, we've been so busy setting up our newest exhibit, "Play On! A History of Sport and Culture in Peace River", we've barely had time to breathe! So for the next little while, we will be posting our favorite archival photographs. Enjoy!

This is one of our Archivist's favorite: From left to right we have Brother Wagner, Philip Gerard and James St. Germain at the St. Augustine Mission school, ca. 1940s. James was a former student of the school who later worked for the school doing various things. In this photograph he appears quite James Bond-esque in his driving scarf, sunglasses and cigarette.

We're online!

In September 2009, the Peace River Museum, Archives and Mackenzie Centre received a grant from the Archives Society of Alberta to help our Archives advance to a new phase. Canadian archives have a standard for describing their records known as RAD (Rules of Archival Description). As we continually striving to increase our level of service as a research facility, the move towards RAD is an important one. It gives us the ability to share our records with the rest of the country!

And as of February 1, 2010 six sets of records from our Archives are officially online with the Archives Society of Alberta's database and can be viewed at: Archives Network of Alberta!

The database contains descriptions of these six records and the Archives will continue to update new descriptions as they are completed. Let us know your impressions!

The Archives Network of Alberta is eventually uploaded to CAIN (Canadian Archival Information Network) which gives us a national presence! We are very excited to have started this new process in making our records available online.

Digitized Newspapers Available at Peace River Archives

The Peace River Museum, Archives and Mackenzie Centre has recently embarked on a project to digitize its collection of Peace River Pilot, Peace River Record, Peace River Standard, Northern Gazette and Peace River Record Gazette. The project is complete and available to researchers on-site at the Archives. The digitized collection includes the Peace River Pilot from 1910, the Peace River Record from 1914-1943, the Peace River Standard from 1917-1922, the Northern Gazette from 1932-1939 and the Peace River Record Gazette from 1943-1983.

The collection has been made into OCR (optical character recognition) pdfs which allows users to do searches by keyword or by date(s). Reproductions of specific articles for private research only are available at a cost of 35c per page.

This project will be of great benefit to all researchers allowing for easier searching and also protecting the microfilmed collection from deterioration from use. For more information, please call the Peace River Museum and Archives at (780) 624-4261 or email us at museum@peaceriver.net.

Archives Week: What Archives Can Do For You!

Celebrating Alberta Archives Week: October 6-11

The Peace River Archives is a relatively new addition to the heritage work the Museum has been doing for the past 40 years. This year for Archives Week, we wanted to get the word out about the role of our Archives in the community.

A view of the interior of the Archives.

As an accredited member of the Archives Society of Alberta, we are committed to certain standards of care and preservation for the materials that we house. We monitor temperature and humidity and limit light exposure, all of which can contribute to the deterioration of records. We use archival standard storage materials to keep these records in the best condition possible.
However, we do not just keep the records around for the sake of doing so. We want these records to be accessible and available to researchers. Part of this process was to hire a full-time Archivist, which was made possible thanks to the support of the Town of Peace River.

As you can see, the Archives is a vital resource in Peace River and the research community at large. Other ways that the Archives can be involved in the community are to:

• store your family's records with the utmost care and attention
• aid in genealogical research
• store the records of community clubs, business' and schools
• act as a resource for care and preservation for your own archival items including photographs, negatives, maps, documents and even textiles!
• provide access to microfilmed copies of the Peace River Standard, Record and Record-Gazette

Family Records & Genealogical Research:
Many people don't know that the Archives can be a central repository for your family's records. We exist to keep records alive and accessible, which includes private records as well as those of public institutions. Your family can bring in the records and talk to our Archivist, Wendy Dyck, about what types of records we keep and how we look after them. Many families have split up their records among siblings, cousins, etc. which can make it difficult to locate particular documents or photographs. The Archives can keep these records together so that any family member, especially generations down the road, can access the records and receive copies. The Peace River Archives has a high quality scanner and printer to reproduce these items for a nominal, cost-recovery based fee.

Club, Business and School Records
Public institutions often have 'dead' records that they may wish to have preserved but either space or human resources are an issue. Our Archives is an excellent solution as we are able to keep these records preserved and available. Each group in Peace River is a part of the identity of this town and as such, it is important that the records of these groups, schools, business' and the people in them are preserved.

How do I look after ....?
If you feel that you would like to hold on to your archival material, the Archives can also be a resource for how to best care for that material. You, as a community member, are always welcome to bring your items into the Archives where our Archivist can make recommendations for your particular collection, as well as refer you to other helpful resources.

The Standard, Record and Record-Gazette
The Museum was part of a micro-filming project with the Legislative Library for Alberta where virtually every issue from 1910-1983 was put on micro-film. The Record Gazette purchased a copy of these rolls and donated them to the Museum upon completion of the project. These are available for the public to either peruse or for specific research projects.

As you can see, there are many different ways that the Archives can interact with and be a part of the larger community of Peace River. If you have any thoughts or questions regarding the Archives, please don't hesitate to email us at museum@peaceriver.net or phone at 624-4261.

Happy Archives Week!

Greetings, Gentle Readers

Welcome to the Peace River Museum, Archives and Mackenzie Centre's new blog!

Here we will be posting information about upcoming events, changes at the museum, new exhibits, tidbits from Peace River's history, openings, and an artifact of the week feature.

For information about the Peace River Museum & Archives, please check out our new and improved website.

Thanks and check back often!