A Wonderful Family Fun Day

This past Saturday, August 20th, the Peace River Museum had its Cabinets of Curiosities Family Fun Day. The afternoon was filled with much laughter, discovery, and fun. Our visitors treasure hunted, they dressed up in many hats, sometimes more than one at a time, vests, military jackets, RCMP red coats, ceintures fléchées, and high-heeled shoes. They curated (designed, installed, and named) their own cabinets of curiosities with our education artifacts. They coloured butterflies to make butterfly cabinets and they did word games, puzzles and mazes.

Elizabeth shows off her exhibit: "Elizabeth's Bones"

Autumn and Jack show off some historic fashions!

Sydney and Autumn are styling!

Sydney's diplays her beautiful artwork and maze skills.

Overall, a wonderful day was had by all. We at the museum certainly had a great time interacting with everyone that came in and enjoyed hearing all of the stories that our Cabinets of Curiosities evoked for them.

Twelve Foot Davis Gravesite

The Peace River Museum, Archives and Mackenzie Centre’s role in the revitalization of Twelve Foot Davis Gravesite in Greene Valley Provincial Park is many-fold. Primarily, it is to provide historical information, from several sources, including Museum files, for the text and photographs used on the signs gracing the Park.

The snippets of information reveal, not only the man, but also the era, environment and culture in which Henry Fuller Davis lived, worked and died.

In addition, the Museum on whose grounds Davis’ headstone rested for a number of years, was charged with the task of seeking an artist – stonemason to bring it back to as close to its original lustre as possible. Rénald Lavoie, from Northern Sunrise Country was that artist.

The Twelve Foot Davis Gravesite is the co-operative effort of Alberta Tourism, Parks and Recreation; Northern Sunrise County; Town of Peace River and GeoTourism Canada.

BE ON TOP OF IT! Come join neighbours, visitors, entertainers and dignitaries at the newly refurbished Twelve Foot Davis Gravesite in Greene Valley Provincial Park, Thursday September 1, 5-8:30 p.m. for a party. There will be a special “hilltop” Concert in the Park performance at 6 p.m. This concludes the Concert in the Park series for this year – Featuring No Limitz.

Cabinets of Curiosity Family Fun Day

The museum’s current exhibition, Cabinets of Curiosity, was our way of finding more space during our collections inventory. Right now, we have over 3,000 objects on display; usually the number of artifacts on display is only about 150. This means 2,850 more objects to discover and stories to tell!

In the time that we’ve had this exhibit open to the public, we’ve received many wonderful comments, so we thought to spend an afternoon celebrating these new cabinets.

What better way to celebrate the cabinets than with a family fun day! The cabinets are as they suggest, curious, so we invite you in to get involved in the exhibit and have some fun. We have a treasure hunt, words games, puzzles, and a dress-up station with historic hats, shoes, vests and much more. You even get the opportunity to be a museum curator; to do what we do and decide which objects to put in your cabinet, arrange them, help them tell a story and then name your curious cabinet.

There is fun for all ages, so bring the entire family and try out some of our activities.

The Museum Grounds

Although the inside of the Museum is filled to capacity with neat historical objects, the grounds of the Museum also have much to offer. The sternwheel of the D.A. Thomas steamship, the private cemetery of Felix Akernum Shaw, and the original headstone from H.A. George and family, and other historic pieces are available for viewing.

Recently, there have been two changes to our grounds:

This past Friday, the museum was lucky enough to play host to the artistic talents of the Ground Level Youth Centre. Tianah, Brittany, Savannah, Kaitlynn, Katelyn, and Riley were here to paint the picnic table on the museum grounds for us.

                                 

 This table is well used by both Museum staff and the public to enjoy a picnic lunch or a coffee while observing our beautiful river valley. However, we have had difficulties with graffiti on the table as well.

So, in an effort to deter graffiti from marking our table, we asked the Ground Level Youth Centre to come down and intentionally paint the table. Our table now has a beautifully painted river scene with such details as decorated tipis, meat drying on a rack, a black bear, canoes, fish, birds, cabins and a fire pit.

As well, we have opened up our Northwest Mounted Police replica cabin and have set up an exhibit for you to enjoy. A huge thank you to Jeremiah Gloor for building a grid door so that we can leave the cabin open during the day for all those who stroll by on the river walkway.

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.