About a year ago, we heard that the grain elevator at Wynndel was going to be torn down. Well, that's a definite, even though the demolition hasn't been scheduled yet.  But the good news is that it won't be lost entirely - CP Rail, which owns the elevator, is going to donate some items from inside it, and a few parts of the structure, to the Creston Museum where they will go on permanent display.



This afternoon, I received a document from CP Rail, confirming the donation and giving us permission to go into the elevator and get them. Watch for them at the Museum very soon!

I'm trying to set up a moving day for next Saturday, August 4, say about 10:00. So now I need a truck and some muscle, and maybe some hand tools.  You available?  [url=mailto:mail@creston.museum.bc.ca]Give me a shout![/url]

There's a boys' sports camp happening this week at the Rec Centre, and, as part of their examination into all things sports, they came down today to check out our collection of sports memorabilia.

Now, we don't actually have much of that on display, so Ethan and Christiana went on a bit of a scavenger hunt in the storage areas and pulled out all sorts of things: Del-Mac hockey jerseys; a uniform from the Lister baseball team; a bowling ball from the CPR hotel at Balfour; a couple sets of golf clubs; a whole bunch of photographs; and lots more.



Then, Ethan spent most of the day yesterday learning as much as he could about the sports history of the Creston Valley (great job on that, by the way, Ethan). 

After some time out on the lawn checking out the objects from storage, they went through the Museum to take a look at the tow-rope from Wynndel ski hill (along with everything else). Looks like everyone had a good time, doesn't it?

It's always fun when groups like this come in - it shakes things up for us and gets us out of talking about the same things over and over again.  I'm really looking forward to the two TAPs groups we have coming in next week - there will be lots of stories and memories being told, I'm sure!

WHile straightening up a year's worth of local newspapers today, I happened across a column that I have never noticed (or at least never paid attention to) before:



It was called "The Voice of Mr. and Mrs. Creston Valley," and it first appeared in the issue of March 18, 1948. Under the headline it reads: "In order to give residents of the valley a more personal opinion of the voice of the local people, this column will publish each week the opinions as given by the people on a questions of local interest."

That opening sentence is a little redundant in places, but I found the column interesting on a couple of points. First, I remember years ago (I was still living in Balfour, so I'm guessing in the late 1980s or thereabouts) when local newspapers all over the place suddenly started printing this sort of column, under headlines such as "Street Beat" and "Out and About." I remember getting the impression, back then, that this was a very cool, very innovative thing - but, as I've realised many many many times since beginning to work in community museums, absolutely nothing is really new.

The second point of interest for me was the topic of this first column: "What is your opinion in regard to a town garbage collection - weekly or monthly?"

Okay, I admit, over the years I have wondered about all manner of bizarre, and occasionally trivial, things relating to local history, but the history of garbage collection has never been one of them. I don't think it ever occurred to me that there wouldn't be garbage collection in any municipality. But, to judge from the comments in this column, until 1948, garbage was only collected twice a year.

Opinions, from Hal WIlson, Rev. T.W. Folkmn, Mrs F. Martello, Mrs. J.S. Parker, C.A. Anderson, and Mrs. B. Friesen, were pretty muich split as to whether monthly or weekly would be better (Mrs. Martello thought every two weeks would suffice, and Rev. Folkman compromised beautifully by saying monthly, but weekly in summer). But all agreed that it would be an great improvement - much more sanitary, much less accumulation of cans, allow for cleaner yards, and a more attractice town for visitors.

I can't imagine what Creston - or any town, for that matter - would look like (and smell like) if garbage was only collected twice a year. All I can say is - ick!

The column concluded with an announcement of the topic for the following week: "What is your opinion of compulsory insurance under the amended Motor Vehicle Act?" (What?!? There was a time when car insurance wasn't required?)  And the week after that: "What is your opinion of the proposed 3 per cent  sales tax?" (I think that mght have been the start of a rather slippery slope.)

Christiana, Ethan, and Laura spent the day (in between tours, that is) working on things for the Suffragette Tea that's coming up on August 11:



Floral centrepieces in the purple, green, and white colours adopted by the Political Equality League, and badges saying "Votes for Women" for all the guests at the Tea who support the cause.

It's going to be great! 

And, don't forget, you can make your own suffragette accessories this Saturday, July 28, right here at the Museum.

I'm sending out a big thank you today, to Margaret Andestad, who sent us a large collection of photos showing the construction of West Kootenay Power dam on the Goat River in Canyon.

There are over 100 photos in the collection, and they show the construction of the dam in step-by-step detail - a fantastic resource! We had a few of them in the collection already, but the vast majority of them are new - and they show everything from the construction of the cribbing to the superintendent's residence to the engines and turbines inside the powerhouse.

I can't show you all of them, because that would be a lot of scanning (feel free to come in and check them out in person, though), but here are a couple:



This one shows the falls in the canyon before the dam was built.  You can see the construction of the powerhouse underway on the right, but the river itself seems to be pretty much natural. I love this image!  We've got a couple already in the collection that show the falls from a distance, or from up on top of the cliff, but this is the first one I've seen that focuses so clearly on the falls themselves.

And here's how it looked after West Kootenay Power got through with it:



Pretty good "before and after," isn't it?

Can anyone help with this?

I had a researcher in this afternoon who was asking about the locations of all sorts of things, from grain elevators to packing sheds to sawmills. One thing he asked about was bulk fuel plants.  He had a list of six of them, and I only knew the location of three.

Here are the ones I knew:
Shell - in what is now the parking lot of the Chamber of Commerce
B/A - along Railway Boulevard/11th Avenue, behind Extra Foods, on the west side of the tracks. B/A was taken over by Gulf, though I don't know if the bulk fuel plant here ever became a Gulf plant.

I know there was a third one along the highway just north of the top end of Valley View Road, but I don't know which company owned it.

He had these ones on his list:
Creston Petroleum
Canadian Propane - our phone books from the 1970s give the address as Highway 3 East
Esso
Texaco

Any idea where these ones were, and which one was at the top of Valley View?

Here's a little excerpt from the Creston Review newspaper:


“E.A. Cleveland of Vancouver, who has the
charge of the laying out of the route of the Transcontinental Automobile
highway, came down over the Summit Creek trail on Sunday.”


The article is, of course, talking about the route that the present-day Highway 3 follows over hte mountains between Creston and Salmo - the Skyway, the Salmo-Creston Highway, or Kootenay Pass as it is variously known.


This is, quite possibly, the earliest reference to building an automobile highway over that summit. Those of you who are familiar with the history of that road might be thinking it dates from the early 1950s - about the time of the treks between the two communities, to demonstrate the need for the highway.





If so, you'd be wrong - it appeared in the Creston Review on 20 September 1912.


1912! It took another forty years before anyone even started building the road, and fifty-one before it was opened! No wonder people were getting so impatient!

Laura, Ethan, Christiana, and Krista have spent the last couple of weeks sorting out a whole bunch of stuff that just doesn't belong in the Museum's collections - it's broken, duplicated many times over, in very poor condition, and/or part of something larger that we don't have. Here are the objects:



The problem with doing this, though, is trying to figure out what on earth we do with this stuff once we've decided we shouldn't keep it in the collections.
A couple of years ago, we pulled a big juniper out of the flower bed next to the Museum's entrance. It had fallen over a couple of times because, growing up against a wall, it was more than a little lopsided, and it was dying rapidly from the top down. That left us with a semi-circular empty space:



We've been debating what to do with this space ever since. We've talked about putting a display of some kind in it, but there really isn't much in our collecton that could withstand being on display outdoors, with no protection of any kind from the weather. THat's another problem.

So tomorrow, Win, John, Andrea, Carol, and Gloria are coming down to help us solve both those problems at once!  They're turning a bunch of those objects into garden art!

I look at those bins of jun...I mean, inspirational objects, and I can't see anything except a random collection of old stuff. But all of our artists were down here today looking at them, and I could just see their creative wheels turning and the ideas flowing. I have no idea what they'll be coming up with, but I can pretty much guarantee, it's going to be fun to watch!

So come on down and watch - all day tomorrow. It starts at 9:00, and goes until 5:00 or the artists have finished their creations, whichever comes first!

July 14, 1967: The Golden Centennaires, an aerobatic team of the RCAF formed pseicifcally to celebrate Canada's 100th birthday perfromed over Creston.  It was the team's only stop in the Kootenays, and the fact that it was here was no doubt due to the fact that Clarence B Lang, the squadron leader, was from Lister.



I've been told that this was the only time Creston ever hosted an airshow of high-performance jets.

And we have film footage of it!  Thanks to Beth Kastellan for providing the film, and to CKCA for providing the funding to convert it from the original 8mm (this is part of the project we've been working on all winter).

Here's the film footage, which I uploaded to YouTube this afternoon.

Today was Vienna D's last day of work here.  She started four weeks ago, on a work term for a program through Kootenay Employment Services, and those four weeks have really flown by!

It's been great having you here, Vienna, and thanks for all you've done - helping out in the gift shop, handling a few public research requests, and, most importantly, digging up biographical information on our elusive suffragettes!

This has been a great day!

Not only did we find proof - at last - that Dorothy Davis, the suffragette we'll be meeting at our old-fashioned tea in August, did indeed live in Creston for a short time, but to make things even better, John L., local CPR guy, brought this in:



Signs like this one were used to mark the stops along the Canadian Pacific Railway. They would be mounted on the station if there was one, or just on posts parallel to the tracks if there was no station.

This one, as you can see from the lack of holes to mount it, was never used. It dates from sometime after 1931 - after the tracks were built along the west shore of Kootenay Lake and the little station at Kootenay Landing was removed, but while Kootenay Landing was still a point of some importance along the line (it isn't anymore).

Here's what Kootenay Landing, at the south end of Kootenay Lake, looked like in its heyday:



And here's what it looks like now (or, at least, how it looked last December):



The sign will be going up on display somewhere around here very soon.  I'm thinking above the model railway.

Artifaction Junkies!

Love that name!  It's the name of the first team of artists to register for this year's Found Art Challenge at the Creston Museum. I know what the "found" objects are that they'll be using to create a piece of garden art, but I have no idea how the Junkies are planning to transform them - all they've said is that it will involve power tools and probably some random paint.

What is a "Found Art Challenge?" Well, from our point of view, it's how we get rid of some of the rusty useless junk and many-duplicated objects that find their way into every community-museum collection. For the artists, it's a chance to get creative and turn that junk into something cool - in this case, a piece of garden art for an empty spot in one of the Museum's flower beds.  Quite a prominent spot, actually - it's right outside the main entrance.

In addition to the Artifaction Junkies, I know there are three or four other teams of artists who are planning to take part - and everyone is welcome, either as creators or spectators. So check it out, and come on down!

Finally! Summer is here! The cold, wet weather has passed, we have bright sunshine, and the temperature is rising fast enough to have a lot of people already complaining about the heat. Down here at the Museum, we get a bunch of other clues that the busy summer season is getting into full swing:

1) Our tour guides barely get a chance to sit down between tours! They finish one just in time to start the next. That's a great thing for us - but it does mean that sometimes nobody's within reach of the phone. We check messages several times a day, so if you're trying to call us please leave a message and we will call you back as soon as we can!

2) My to-do list never gets done, because I'm spending so much time down in the Museum helping give tours or staff the gift shop. But that's okay - I accepted long ago that my to-do list is really just a list of things that aren't going to get done today!

3) We no longer need a sweater inside the Museum. That's a benefit to the warmer weather - it's finally starting to penetrate the 18-inch-thick stone walls of the Museum building. Those walls are a natural air conditioner, so if you need a break from the heat, come on down - even though you don't need a sweater, it's still much cooler in here than anywhere outside!

4) I can get a nasty sunburn while doing my job. The fact that my job, some days, involves hanging out on a lovely shaded patio talking to visitors (members of the Packard car club we had here yesterday) is just one of the many reasons I love what I do!

5) We no sooner get one event, exhibit, or other craziness finished, than we leap headlong into the next! One Kids' Day, two car shows, and three exhibits already this summer - next up is the Found Art Challenge and then the Old-Fashioned Tea. Whew! No wonder people are always asking me what we've been doing down here!