A century-old Christmas wish. . .

The Shuswap’s oldest apple tree is living proof of a relationship between the area’s first settler and the permanent residents, members of the Secwepemc First Nation.

Lindsay Ault was surprised to find how much she learned while working at the Salmon Arm Museum. Her job as Registrar of Collections taught her transferable skills while building muscles!

July 1998 Crack. A small lightning strike in the Fly Hills. We saw it. Felt it. Salmon Arm’s Fire Chief Ken Tebo was taking a coffee break on the deck of No. 3 Fire Hall in downtown Salmon Arm. He looked up and saw smoke. Then the Fire Chief said, “We’d better keep an eye on that,” to his colleagues drinking their coffee. Within a week there was a disaster. At the same time, Pam Axley was on duty at the Queest Forestry Tower on the Anstey Arm of Shuswap...

My visitors thought the photo in the calendar in the exhibit was a piece of art imitating real life. As the exhibit’s Curator, though, I was imitating art; the photo was snapped in 1914 by Rex Lingford just before he went off to Valcartier. All of a sudden I was seeing the exhibit through my visitors’ eyes.

Twin sisters Jasmine and Morgan volunteered to help work with the collection and move this summer. Part of their assignment was to write a "What I did for summer vacation" report. They were enthusiastic, but have not decided to change their career plans. Morgan plans to be a Chef when she grows up and Jasmine plans to be a Veterinarian.

Moving a museum collection isn’t like moving a house full of things. According to Movers.com the average 3 bedroom household requires an average of 75 to 90 boxes. Lindsay Ault, Haney’s Registrar of Collections packed the first room - the rolling shelving room. Lindsay filled 180 boxes, double the maximum needed to move the average home. This is the collection’s second move in 28 years. I was there for the first and the artefact and archival collections have grown. In 1990...

The monthly board meeting was scheduled for June 19th, but when Irene LaBoucane, District Principal of Indigenous Education for School District 83, Mishel Quaal, and Digital Media Instructor Brent Chudiak came out to view the Montebello they had a proposal for a rental on the same day. Susan agreed to take on another event. The School Board needed a space to hang the Knowledge Keepers, to honour the participants in the exhibit, and for a celebration with the four area bands – Neskonlith,...

There’s a lot happening in the basement of the current museum and archives. Contractors have installed the rolling shelving in the Montebello Museum. Getting ready for them meant staff and volunteers emptied the shelving in the archives.

It started with an email from a Vernon researcher. “I’m looking into the stories behind the people who were imprisoned in Vernon Internment Camp during World War I.  They were thought to be enemy sympathisers because they were born in the Austria-Hungarian Empire." “Do you know anything about Henry Puff? He and his dad served briefly in Vernon,” Don McNair wrote in an email. I knew Henry and August but didn’t know they had been interned.   I knew...