Our Biggest Treasure

Where on earth did a whole year go?? I feel like I just started my position here at MSA Museum but I realized the other day that I’ve been here for over a year now. Summer students have come and gone, exhibits, too, have come and gone, and loads of events. We’ve hosted loads of fun events – Sweet connections, St. George’s Day, Heritage Fair, Nordic Spirit, Optimist Fun fair, the CPR Magic Lantern opening event, Trethewey House Autumn Wine festival, Halloween and just this past week, the Old Fashioned European Christmas Market, to name a few. The House has seen several weddings and some other rentals, and the Gallery has been booked for a variety of meetings and even a birthday party. We’ve also participated in off-site events hosted by others, such as Arbor Day, Abbotsford Police Family Day, Berry Beat, Canada Day, Agrifair and Abbyfest. We would not have been able to do any of this if we did not have volunteers to help us. Our volunteers are our biggest Treasure. We need help with everything from answering the phones and general office duties to hosting school tours to set-up and take-down before and after events. Since I started here, my Treasures have helped me move the whole collection, collapse, move and re-assemble the shelving (who knew Jerry Gosling was part monkey?! He is, I know because I’ve seen him climbing from shelf to shelf ten feet off the floor…), set up and tear down for all of the aforementioned events, pick up and return tents, fencing, lights and other equipment, picked up our recycling and returned our empties, tended to our plants, decorated for Halloween and Christmas, acted as docents, Father Christmas and one room school house teachers, not to mention scared the living daylights out of small children during Halloween. There are a million small tasks that need to get done, but when you add up all the small tasks, all of these little molehills become a substantial sized mountain. Without our volunteers, we’d run out of time to perform a huge chunk of our respective job descriptions. Then there are times when we just need raw muscle, and quite frequently we need someone with a truck larger than mine or, alternatively, someone who can wash linens without turning them pink. Either way, in short, we love our volunteers because they provide vital services to us, but I personally just plain love our volunteers because they are lovely people. Period.