August Artist of the Peace: Rhonda Warren

August will feature a textile exhibit from Rhonda Warren. Rhonda is a homegrown Peace Country artist who says that "the natural environment of the area inspires much of her art." Though Rhonda works with various mediums, including making her own paper, this exhibit will focus on her felted art.

Felt is created using wool strands which are covered in tiny scales which when rubbed together, catch on each other and shrink into a mat. If you are interested in how felting is done, Rhonda has included information with her art on the process.

We invite everyone to come and view Rhonda's beautiful felt pieces.

The Peace River Musuem would also like to extend our gratitude to Rhonda, who has been scheduling our art wall. We appreciate her volunteer time and effort in helping our Peace River artists show off their beautiful work.

Heritage Days Cemetery Tour

Join the staff of the Peace River Museum on August 1st, 2011 for an interpretive stroll through the Mount Pleasant Cemetery. The tour, which will begin at 11 am and again 3 pm, will highlight fascinating stories of some of Peace River’s historic personalities now resting in Mount Pleasant Cemetery. The tours will run rain or shine, so please dress appropriately.

The Museum gets new storage!

It’s been a big year for the artifact collections of the Peace River Museum. In a previous blog, we brought to you the history of Cabinets of Curiosity and told you about our own versions of these cabinets which would be set up this year. This new type of exhibition is happening because we are undertaking a complete collections inventory for the year. It’s a big job but we’re up to the task.

So far, we have removed every object from the collections room and inventoried it. This cleared the room in preparation for our new rolling shelving!!! The shelving, pictured below, was obtained through a Community Facility Enhancement Program grant, monetary donations to the Museum, and help from the Town of Peace River. This wonderful new shelving has given us 50% more space in that room than we had previously, which means that all our artifacts are now going to be in a better situation where we can more easily protect and care for them.

The next stage of this inventory is to continue to clean each of the artifacts and move them onto their new shelves. Conservation projects on some of these objects have taken a great deal of time as well. We are also taking photographs of as many of the artifacts as we can.

The Peace River Museum opened in 1967 as a Canadian Centennial Project. In our 44 years of existence, we’ve amassed quite a few artifact donations. This amounts to about 8000 objects in our collection. That’s a lot of artifacts to inventory, clean, conserve, photograph and re-shelve. But, since January we’ve made great progress and we look forward to continuing with this worthwhile project.

The Cabinets of Curiosity exhibit will be up for the 2011 year. Keep an eye on our blog and website for an upcoming Family Fun Day!

Artist of the Peace: 4-H Multi Club

This month's Artists of the Peace are sponsored by Peace of Art (formerly the Peace River Art Club) and they are the Peace River 4-H Multi Club. These enthusiastic youth have brought their art to show off and it is lovely. Much of the art is a reflection of the different modules they have held over the past year. We invite everyone to come view their work.

Some of our local 4-H Multi Club members

Here is a little history, as written by the 4-H Club:
"The Peace River 4-H Multi Club has been run in Peace River since 1998 and has had a range of projects from horse to foods and paintball and crafts. We have had a range from 9 to over 30 members."

If you are interested in more information on the 4-H Club please contact Jill Wood at 780-624-5270

And remember that admission to the Art Wall is FREE (admission to the Museum is $2 per person).

Meet the Authors evening

The Museum will be hosting three local authors this Friday, July 8th from 6:30-8pm. At 7 pm, each of the authors will read from their books.

Carmel Ellis
Many have already enjoyed Carm's book: Barns of the North Peace. On July 8th Carm will be bringing his new and updated version as well as promoting his second book: Wilderness Park - Reflections 2010 which is a great book for anyone who loves the flora and fauna of the North.

Dollye Cooper
Dollye's memoirs: Looking Back with Dollye Cooper, is filled with wonderful memories of her life:
"When I came up to Grimshaw and he[Basil] asked me to marry him, we stayed at the Nickersons'. After supper the two of us went for a walk. The sidewalks were just boards and had many large cracks in them. Basil went to put the ring on my finger, but it fell down in the snow between the boards! Both of us were down on our knees, frantically searching in the snow. We must have been a sight, laughing so hard. Needless to say, we found it. Our children and grandchildren love to hear and relate this tale to anyone who will listen."

David McLaughlin
Stories I Love to Tell by David McLaughlin is also filled with great memories growing up in Alberta and eventually reaching the Peace River area: "In yet another life changing passage, I resigned from my teaching career of thirteen years with its steady paychecks and solid pension plan. We sold our mobile home; borrowed as much money as Farm Credit would lend us; borrowed additional funds from my mother; loaded up the family and all our belongings on two pickups and a trailer and headed for the Peace country and a career in full time farming. Most people, including our families, thought we were crazy and maybe we were. The years that followed were filled with hard work, disappointing crops, falling grain prices, rising costs and isolation from our families and friends. On the plus side, we raised our family in an excellent environment away from the problems of an urban life style and, in the end, inflated real estate prices set the basis from our eventual financial freedom."

Anyone interested in self-publishing, genealogy and local history would very much enjoy chatting with any of our local talents that will be present at this event. The local Peace River & District Genealogy Society will also have information available.

Happy Canada Day!

As is tradition, this year's Canada Day festivities will begin at the Museum with a flag raising ceremony at 11:30 am. Bring your decorated bikes and strollers and participate in the walking parade from the Museum to the Riverfront Park along the scenic river trail. At Riverfront Park, the festivities will continue with performances and family activities until 3 pm. (For more information, please call Community Services at (780) 624-1000 or you can view their poster here.) And don't forget the fireworks that will take place July 1st at 11:59 pm!


The Museum will also be open from 12-4 pm and admission is FREE all afternoon. Come and see our Cabinets of Curiosities including our excellent rock and fossil collection and explore the Sir Alexander Mackenzie gallery where you can see a beaver, brown bear and many other northern furs and learn more about Sir Alexander Mackenzie's historic voyage across Canada.

Fun at the Fossil Road Show

Dinosaurs, rocks, fossils and minerals are certainly interesting subjects, and the residents of Peace River seem to agree. More than 240 people, including 117 students visited Athabasca Hall last Thursday to learn about Northwest Alberta Palaeontology from Grande Prairie Regional College palaeontologists Katalin Ormay and Robin Sissons.

There were slide shows of photographs and interesting facts, a floor puzzle, colouring sheets, crosswords, rocks and minerals to identify, and dinosaur bones to touch. In the photograph to the left, the Winters boys, Noah (7), Jabin (5) and Jude (8) show us the floor puzzle they completed and Noah also shows us a dinosaur he coloured and put together with moveable arms and legs.

The museum was delighted to host this event so that we too could learn more about palaeontology. Following the Road Show on Thursday, Katalin and Robin were at the museum on Friday, to help us identify all of the pieces in our collection. This project took all day and was fun for both the museum and the palaeontologists. They tell us that we have quite a wonderful collection!

This Road Show as well as the identification of the museum’s pieces stem from Robin’s first visit to Peace River to find out what sorts of palaeontology artifacts we have in our collection. They were quite impressed and offered to come up again to help us identify all of the pieces. There just wasn’t time in her first visit to identify it all.

We invite you all down to come and see this collection! It was unknown to us until last Friday, but we have another Albertosaurus tooth and another dinosaur bone in our collection. We can also boast that most of the bison bones in our collection are from the Ice Age, so they are at least 10,000 years old.

The museum would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to Katalin and Robin as well as everyone that attended our event.

Artist of the Peace: Ground Level Youth Group

The Peace River Museum, Archives and Mackenzie Centre is pleased to host the art of the Ground Level Centre Youth Group. The group was run by Rhonda Warren and features a number of different kinds of projects. We hope many are able to come out and view the hard work of these young people.
Note that there is no fee to view the art wall. There is a $2 admission fee to see the Museum.
Please see below for some more information on the Youth Group, which is open to all young people, or come to the Museum to get a brochure and a calendar of events!

From the Youth Centre: "The Ground Level Youth Centre Project provides youth with opportunities, through programs and activities to connect with positive caring and supporting adult role models who are available to assist youth to build on their strengths, identify their weaknesses, and thus encourage them to be the best that they can be.
All programs, services and activities are structured in a manner so that youth are empowered to address the challenges they face and determine their own future with a sense of pride in a safe, secure and culturally sensitive environment.
Youth are actively involved in the project design, development and delivery at all levels within the project through their attendance and participation at regularly scheduled Youth Council meetings and daily interaction with project staff members.

Program Mission Statement:
"All youth are valued, supported and provided with opportunities to realize their individual and collective potential."

The mission statement is inclusive of all youth in our community and allows us to develop new programs, or revise to strengthen current programs and activities so that the ever changing needs of the youth are being met."

Results of Heritage Run

The Peace River Museum would like to sincerely thank the Peace River Running Club for organizing the 2011 Heritage Run and also to thank the individuals who participated. It was a great success with approximately 80 runners and walkers from all over the Peace Country and as far away as Edmonton!
Here are the top three times from each category (note that these are not organized by age group).

5k Run

John Mark Earle at 22:22
Mathieu Breker  at 23:44
Kevin Breker at 24:25

5k Walk

Ken Bonertz at 36:37
Danielle Murray at 49:19
Kayleigh Goy, Michelle Duval & Tracy Goy at 52:46

10k Run
Neil Martin at 47:13
Yves Lavoie at 48:22
Laurene Willox at 48:27

Half Marathon
Ken Wurst at 1:28:18
Bart-Jan Jorna at 1:38:01
Nicole Steffelaar at 1:49:50

Here are our runners coming in around the corner. As you can see, those of all ages participated in the run and we hope everyone had a wonderful time!