Echoes of Christmases Past

Do you have a favourite Christmas memory? Or do you have too many Christmases that you don’t care to remember? My younger brother has one of those stories that you wouldn’t wish on anybody from when he was very young. You see, where I come from (Sweden) Santa comes to your house on December 24th, and when I say he comes to your house, he comes through the front door while you’re awake, not through the chimney while you’re sleeping, either! Usually it’s the dad from next door who’s got dressed up as Santa, or some uncle or whoever is game. There are masks and beards and suits to buy in the store, and one year, my very young brother (something like 2 years of age) had found such a mask with attached beard. He’d somehow managed to get to close to an open flame. Do you know what happens when fake beard made of fluffy cotton meets flame? That’s right…WOOF! The result wasn’t so much a disastrous amount of burns to his face and hands as a long-lasting terror relating to anything Santa Claus-ish. Me, on the other hand, I have another Santa malady story… When I was about four or five years old, we lived at the top of a hill. The house backed on to a grassy ravine. That ravine was great for tobogganing and snow ball wars – no trees or shrubs, just a long, wide open slope that came to a soft low grade stop at the bottom. Man, we could make those toboggans go! I don’t have any idea why Santa, a.k.a. my dad in disguise, decided that it’d be a great idea for Santa to come up that cotton picking ravine, as opposed to come up the street and in the front door like any other Santa…I guess he had this idea that it would be picturesque and exciting for me and all my (seemingly) 100 cousins, aunties and uncles to all gather on the patio to watch Santa with his big burlap sack full of gifts come up the snow-clad hill. Oh, it was picture, alright, only not how he’d intended it… (I’d like to point out that this is the same hill that my older brother used to run up and down…with me on his shoulders…in order to make himself a hockey super star, and he was a whole lot younger than dad and I was a lot lighter than the burlap sack full of gifties, but it’d still just about kill him!) More than half way up the hill Santa ran out of steam, slipped in the icy snow, fell and slid back down the hill while we, the children, watched as our Christmas presents were distributed all over the darkened hillside. I remember crying from feeling sooooo sorry for poor Santa. Later that night, Dad returned from “some errand” (you know the one that made him miss Santa’s arrival), and only minutes after that, we heard this funny sort of “clink-sploosh…clink-sploosh” sound emanating from the patio where we’d just stood watching Santa back slide. What can that be, wondered the children. My dad did not wonder. He immediately recognized the sound of the beer that had been left to cool in flats out on the patio freezing in its glass bottles, causing the bottles to explode and the beer to spill down the patio and onto the lower deck and lawn. My poor dad… The whole incidence only got worse by the fact that in the spring, when the snow thawed, I found Santa’s torn burlap sack spread out all over my dad’s bed of pruned roses… Oh, dear, poor Santa! And then I cried for his troubles again. What malady could possibly have befallen him that was so bad that his sack would have torn and somehow ended up on dad's roses?! I really, really loved Santa. Especially when he looked and sounded like my dad.

Happy Holidays to all of you!

(Oh, and remind me in the New Year to tell you about a True Reid New Year’s Eve…)

The Annual Lament Post

Well, they’re gone again… All my students are back in their respective classrooms, and we miss them a lot. A big lot. Once again, we were very fortunate to have attracted some top notch applicants, and it was really brutal to try and whittle the numbers down from well over 100 applicants to around 15 to interview.

Resumes look completely different now as compared to what they used to look like when I was the same age as these students are now, much more abbreviated and yet containing much more information. After that initial step, we met with some of the most spectacular applicants to date. It was really difficult to choose, it actually felt really ridiculous to have to cut applicants based on ludicrous things like one tiny single spelling error, but they were all that good. The exceptions to the rules were the applicants that were not on the dean’s list or who hadn’t worked in some magnificent job previous summers. The odd one showed up looking like they’d never seen an iron in their lives, and one applicant smelled so bad from smoke that it made one of the staff break out in a five hour asthma attack, but really, most of these applicants were ridiculously suited for the job.

The most popular mistake was to not read the instructions for how to submit an application, i.e. sending it to us without cover letter, in the wrong format and/or addressed to the wrong person with the wrong title, and on occasion, to the wrong museum. About 25% of the applicants could be weeded out right off the bat based on that, because if you cannot take very simple instructions that basically are only two sentences long, chances are, you’ll have a hard time mastering our cataloguing programs and other computer programs. (And really, by the time you address your letter to Dear Mrs. Executive Director Dorothy Van Der Ree, how are you supposed to fit the rest of your cover letter on one page?) Most of the resumes were stellar. Generally, it was the cover letter that made our lives easier by making the selection process quicker. Note to self: Do not start your cover letter with “Hi! Sorry for the late reply. I’ve been away on vacation with my parents for two weeks”. Also, if you really want us to consider your resume, please type your name in some sort of English script so we can read it. Oh and include your name, and preferably your contact information, somewhere on the resume. And don’t call me two hours after you press the send button to ask why you have not been contacted yet, and if I tell you that we will contact prospective applicants after May 10th, don’t call me May 4th and ask why we have not called.

At the end of the day, those rather humorous mistakes were the exceptions to the rule. The applicants that got the jobs had a winning combination of stellar resume and a personality that fit in with the permanent staff. They really put their noses to the grindstones for us, and so, all I have to say is Harpreet, Sarah and Pam: Thank you, thank you and thank you for a great summer!

Support for MSA in the unlikeliest of places...

Fellow summer student Pamela shows her support for MSA Museum all the way in New York City!

Hello!

Hello, for the second time! Sarah here.
This marks my fourth-ish week working with the MSA Museum Society, and yes, I am still just as excited as when I started!
Last week the Optimist Society of Abbotsford held a Viking Family Fun Fair at the Museum and the grounds. It was cool to see Trethewey House, normally 1920s, be transformed back to the Viking era! The Viking group Reik Felag came and recreated a village with Norse peoples. They challenged the horse shoe club which practices just outside the museum to a old Viking game, and there was even a Scandinavian and Norse arts and craft display set up in the guest room of the house.

There’s also a bunch of fun family events coming up for the Museum! The next is Berry Beat. Us summer students are experimenting and thinking of ways to make our tent the craftiest and berriest! We’re trying out fun crafts for kids to do, and an activity, too. Berry Beat takes place July 9 and 10 downtown Abbotsford on Montrose & Essendene.

Well, that’s it for now!
Sarah

Hello Again!

Hi Everyone,


My name is Pam and I am back from University, working at the MSA Museum for my second summer! I am so excited to be back and am even more excited about all the changes that have been going on at the Museum over the past eight months. Make sure you come by to look at some information about the Discovery Centre concept that is in the works at Trethewey House! My first week back, I was lucky enough to attend Arbour Day which was a lot of fun. The MSA Museum had a booth with a colouring activity for kids, birdhouse giveaways and lots of information about upcoming MSA events. My first two weeks here have definitely been fun-filled with many tours in Trethewey House, and the International Museum’s Day event we had on the 14th of May, where we had the Spinners and Weavers, a rope making station, gold mining and more!

The Educational Kit that I began working on last summer is finally finished! We have acquired tons of great props and pictures over the past few months to enlighten kids about the complex and difficult lives of some infamous Western bandits, such as Billy Miner and Jesse James. In addition, there is lots of interesting information about the police departments in the lower mainland. In this kit, kids can touch badges and epaulettes that belonged to officers in the RCMP, the Abby Police Department and the Vancouver Police Department, and see uniforms, a handcuff holder and an old hand-held radio first-hand. If you have a class studying the pioneer era, stop by to pick up the “Outlaws and Heros” kit!

Over the past few weeks, I have had the pleasure of cleaning out Granny’s Attic with my fellow summer students. It was so great to look through the hidden toys and booklets. The favourite item I came across yesterday was an old fan from Japan. Even though it was a little beat up, it had a gorgeous red pattern that I loved!

Anyways, it’s great to be back and I can’t wait to update this blog with all the daily activities going on at the Museum!

Later,

Pam

Summer 2011

Hello! Summer Students 2011 reporting for the first (of hopefully many) blog posts. You may be asking, who are these new summer students and what do they do? Well, here we are to introduce ourselves to you, wonderful blog viewer!

My name is Sarah, and I am one of the three (very lucky) students who were chosen to work for the MSA Society over the summer of 2011. I am going in to my second year at Simon Fraser University in the fall and study in the School of International Studies. I’ve always been a self-professed history nerd (which will become apparent in future posts) so working here, even just over the summer, is such a cool experience for me and I’m already loving it! Today marks my third day here, and I must say, I have looked forward to each day, and go home happy in the evening! The past three days have taught me so much (already!!) about the history of Abbotsford and the Tretheweys, but I’ve also been working on some research. Me and Harpreet were researching Christmas decorations in the 1920s and the things we found were very… interesting, we’ll say. Like, did you know it’s traditional for Scandinavian Yule or Christmas to have a goat made of hay? They’re so cute, but who would have known?! Anyways, all together, my time here has started out fantastically and I look forward to spending my summer at the MSA Society!

Hello world! So here is my first post on this blog, on my second day at work for the MSA Museum Society. And already, it’s shaping up to be quite an experience. A little bit about me first: I am Harpreet and I’ve just completed my third year at UBC in the Biology program. I love history and research and have lived my whole life in Abbotsford and am eager to learn more about my hometown during the coming summer months.


So far I have learned a surprising amount about Abbotsford’s history, and especially the contribution of the Trethewey family in shaping our city. But of course, there is so much more to learn! I will soon start on the research for my kit and will bombard you with the cool bits of information I pick up along the way. I am tremendously excited to be working here for the coming summer and for all the events and experiences my time here will encompass.

Recycling

Once upon a time a Swedish girl went with her father-in-law to a concert in Vancouver. He had been so kind as to purchase the tickets for said show as a birthday present for her, just because he had heard that she loved to play the fiddle. Completely disinterested in fiddle music himself, he none the less ever so kindly engaged in a conversation with her about fiddles and confessed to her that he had a "piece of junk" under his bead in the apartment, something that came from some great grandparent. The Swedish girl, who, despite the blonde hair, is not as dumb as she looks, put two and two together along the lines of "great grandparent when there is Norwegian in the family + fiddle = possible Hardanger fiddle". Several hours later, after the concert and a drive to White Rock plus elevator ride up to dad's apartment, she was able to confirm that yes, it was an 8 string Hardanger, complete with carved dragon head, scrimshaw decoration all over, except for the parts that were inlaid with mother-of-pearl. I'm just telling you that story because again I want you to realize that what may seem to be junk to you, may not be junk to me. To that end, I'm also re-posting something from British Columbia Historical Federation's Newsletter (ISSN print 1710-1433), just because it's such a god article and because it most definitively applies to the MSA Museum. Pretty please with a cherry on top read this and think hard about what you may have in your closet (or, as it were, under your bed)! Other BCHF newsletters and such can be found at their web site, http://www.bchistory.ca/.

It’s time to share those hidden treasures

Every closet has a box, every basement has a trunk, every

garage has a container and many contain bits of history in

photographs, collectibles, invoices, programs, etc. This is a good

time to relax and reminisce and to share some of this history with

your local museum or archives.

Many of the local museums and archives were established in the

1950's - 1960's and often have periods of time with little history,

pictures, etc. One of our new Associate members was sharing

with me her childhood when she lived in Richmond and

mentioned her grandparents operated a general store. In

checking with the Archives, they advised they had nothing on the

general store. Our new member is sharing pictures, bits of history

and memories with the archives. Another BCHFmember is a garage

sale addict and recently arranged a donation from an owner of five

1914 leather bound volumes of BRITISH COLUMBIA FROM THE

EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PRESENT by Scholefield and Howay

PLUS three BIOGRAPHICAL volumes of this series. We are

Presently researching them for information for articles, etc. and will

be donating them to libraries for research purposes.

I came across three boxes of service club memorabilia - I was a

Charter Member of the Richmond Kinsmen Club in 1959. The

boxes contain the Charter Group photograph, pictures of events,

parades, etc. that are now 40 to 50 years old! The Richmond

Archives advised they have nothing on the Richmond Kinsmen

Club and were thrilled that this missing part of Richmond’s history

will soon be filled.

When you look at your old photographs of buildings, events,

parades, etc. they could be of great interest to your local museum

or archives, so talk to them about it. Old street pictures from the

1920's or 1930's often show merchants’ store signs, invoices from

local businesses no longer operating are local history. If you wish

to keep the originals, the Museum/Archives can take copies that

are often better than the originals and you can retain the originals.

When checking through your boxes of forgotten memories, share

with us any unexpected item or special parts of history you have

shared with your local museum or archives.

In the Chinese Zodiac, this is the year of the Rabbit, so this is a

good time to HOP TO IT and start checking out your closet, attic,

basement, etc.

Ron Hyde, Editor

I'm not going to post anything...

Well, OK, so I lies, but only almost... I am posting, but it's nothing to do with collections management or history (I'll do that later, right now, this is more urgent). It's to do with social commentary.

We are, as you know, located in Abbotsford, and I hear a lot of my fellow British Columbians complaining right now. We're tired of the gray weather, cannot wait for summer, draaaaagging ourselves to work, fighting colds and the flu...we're feeling pretty hard done by right now. Many of us are dealing with illnesses that you can't really "see on the outside", and are met with the same "but you don't look sick" comments on a regular basis. I am one of those people, so I am very aware of how frustrating this can be, and how even diseases that are "invisible" to other people can be completely debilitating and exhausting. Some of us are single parents dealing with all that that entails, right from permanent sleep deprivation to permanently empty bank accounts, and some are "just" working poor despite bending over backwards... There are all sorts of reasons why we are just plain old fed up right now. So here is the official "suck it up, Buttercup" video. If you complain after this...well, at least I tried.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gc4HGQHgeFE&feature=related

We’re having a fashion show!

As you probably know by now (if you’ve followed my incessant ramblings about Trethewey House), Trethewey House was completed in 1920. In its heyday, the Abbotsford Lumber and Mining Company was the third largest employer in the province. Comparatively speaking, that puts Mr. Trethewey on the map as wealthy, and that affluence shows in the house. The plans for the house were bought from the Sears and Roebuck Catalogue, but as a difference to most folks who bought homes from the catalogue, Mr. Trethewey only purchased the plans, not the whole kit. He used locally produced materials in the house, such as brick from Clayburn, and, of course, lumber and shingles from his own mill, to construct this beautiful Arts and Crafts style bungalow than now sits at the heart of Abbotsford.

The style in which the house is built is emblematic for its era. So often when people want to hear about the Trethewey family and their home, they assume that we’re speaking about a time that lies farther back in history. Although it is true that our first pioneers came here at a time when “Little House on the Prairie” style clothing would have been worn, and that the Trethewey brothers came here just after the turn of the century, this house was built by Mr. Trethewey in 1920 for his third wife, Reta, and their son Joey. Reta was nothing like Laura Ingalls Wilder. Reta was a 1920’s flapper! So, on Wednesday, April 23rd at 6 PM, the MSA Museum Society is proud to present a fashion show of vintage 1920’s clothing in concert with fashions for today’s modern woman. Ivan Sayers is a fashion historian who specializes in the study of women’s, men’s, and children’s fashions, from 1650 to the present. Sayers has one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of historic clothing in private hands across Canada, and on April 23rd he will be bringing some of his 1920’s collection to The Old Spaghetti Factory on Sumas Way for a fashion show unlike no other. Be prepared to be wowed!

The 1920’s style was new and dazzling, a break with previous tradition that embraced all things modern. It was the result of many socioeconomic changes. Fashion was no longer just for the rich, as it was quite simply easier to sew a flapper shift than to piece together the earlier styles that had used up yards and yards of expensive fabrics, lace, buttons and other decorations (in archaeology we call that ostentatious wealth). In the 20’s, those who were very rich could still show it by using very expensive materials, such as silk, but the not-so-rich could still afford the style by using the same pattern but cheaper fabrics. This negated some of the social differences that had been more obvious before. That, in turn, was a societal change that was the result of, among other things, WWI.

Flapper style didn’t actually truly begin until the mid-1920’s. It was only really between the years 1926 and 1928 that, with the Charleston craze, the evening dress hemlines actually rose up to be in line with day dress lengths. That is the true Flapper style! It entailed ridding yourself of corsets and boning and donning shorter than before shapeless shift dresses, a new style of make-up and short, sleek hairstyles.

So what about the great metropolis of Abbotsford in the 1920’s? For that, I will cite Mrs Margaret Weir in One Woman’s Words, published by MSA Museum Society:

“There were a couple of barber shops for men and in Mr. Hunt’s shop on the south side of Essendene. There was also his pool room. These daring women went in to the pool room, climbed into the chair only men used before this daring advent, and had their hair “shingled”. We were free of hair that had to be “done up,” but permanents hadn’t come into being and wouldn’t be in Abbotsford until 1930, so there we were with “bobs,” all looking alike.”

The good, the bad and the (really) ugly

Goodness gracious, where did all of January go?? So much for “slow time” at the MSA… Anyhow, I’m very happy to be able to say that I have two students working with me. Angie comes to us from UFV and puts in 10 hours per week on our behalf. She doesn’t spend all of them here, but she does help me with things such as our educational kits, my catalogue, fundraising and PR – all then things we do in a day. James is much younger and comes to us via the school district. He is a terrific help at the office. It may sound stupid, but trust me, some of the really simple tasks like shredding, alphabetizing things and scanning bugs us down in a big way. There are a zillion miniscule tasks to be completed each week that are simple but time consuming, and James can do those things for us. The best part is that Sheila has been hired on full time now. Sheila is a colleague and also my friend, so the atmosphere in the office at the moment really could not get any better. It’s nice to be able to say that I belong to the small part of the work force that actually looks forward to going to work every day.


I am saddened by the news of the extensive purposeful damaging and looting of archaeological artifacts in Egypt. Not only are the buildings in which the artifacts are being housed damaged, but magazines that were sealed off for the protection of either people or artifacts (sometimes both) have been breeched, stores looted and for some reason, some people have felt the necessity to willfully damage some of the thousands of years old mummies. Because I am active within the archaeological community, I am now starting to get some very distressing messages from Egypt requesting help to protect these artifacts. Many people are very reluctant to get involved, as this is to do with politics and a political uprising that we do not want to or are unable to take sides in, but then again, it is called World heritage. It is such a shame. I suppose that if one is starving and looking to feed ones family, then one will do just about anything to do so, but an awful lot of this has to do with just wanton destruction of cultural property. In the end, the people that I am really appalled with are the shylocks that actually buy these stolen treasures. I can go to the net right now and find you stolen artifacts, and not just from Egypt. That makes me sick.

A few years ago, this beautiful mummy from one of the world’s war torn regions was available for purchase at a popular on-line auction site. It was purported to be several thousand years old, had some gold foils and gem stones on the casing and so on. Fortunately, someone with some actual authority got wind of this. By that time, the on-line bids were up in the hundreds-of-thousands of dollars. The mummy was confiscated through an international sting. Turns out it really was a mummy. Turns out there was gold leaf and some cheap gems. Turns out the mummy was not old but new. Hopefully the woman whose body was mummified was already dead, as opposed to killed for this specific purpose. Hopefully she has no grieving family that does not know where her grave is or are wondering if she is dead or alive.

All I’m saying is that this stuff is not addicting like heroin. You can just NOT buy the stuff, because if there is no market for stolen property, then there will be no vendors of it, either. Kind of like that old saying “what if there was a war and nobody came”.

Happiness in a thread

Soooooo…did you have a good Christmas? (Providing, of course, you celebrate Christmas in the first place!). I’ve had a nice, relaxing time off, as the museum closes over the holiday season. I’ve spent the time re-visiting some arts and crafts that I’ve not had a chance to practice for about a year now. I used to knit a lot when I was younger, and I decided I needed to make some more knitted santas – a lot more. Mostly I took the time to churn out a bunch of card woven ribbon and I managed to at least cut out all the pieces for a Viking Age style woman’s caftan in wool. The ribbon is to go on it eventually, and now I am looking to get going on a card woven hair band. Card weaving, or tablet weaving as it is also called, is one of those things that I got into as a form of experimental archaeology. I figured I’d understand it better if I could figure out how to make it myself. Said and done, I set off on this journey of discovery that has lead me down some very interesting paths. You see, you can’t just…well, you can, let me rephrase that…I can’t just stick to store bought stuff, of course, so learning how to weave entails learning how to make the cards, the carding wool/preparing flax for linen or nettle for thread and so on, the dyeing with natural materials and spinning and so on. During this journey I have learned ever more difficult patterns and techniques. At the moment I am working on figuring out different ways to set up the weave (there are a variety of looms and such one can use, or just a belt and a doorknob) and fiddling around with materials I’ve not used before, and it was during this journey that I have found happiness in a thread. Silk thread, to be precise. Anyhow, that’s all personal things that I’ve done over the Christmas holiday… Now for something more work related:


Yet another year’s gone by. All things being relative, this is the slower time of the year for me here at work. By that I mean that I’ve got a couple of days at this time of year to catch up on things that have had to be left for a while, “tasks to be completed later”, and begin more detailed planning of the things we’ve decided to plan for the upcoming year. The event schedule is set no later than December, but now comes all the nitty-gritty planning, such as timelines of the day of an event, figuring out how many volunteers we will need, how many tents and who will cater it all and so on. As the collections manager, I also have time to do much needed research for exhibits, educational kits and objects in the collection, and as of late, I have tried to cram in as much of that as possible. The research is always put on file in report form, of course, but it is from these files that I can extract information for exhibit notes and such. This is the part of my job that I relish. I love to write, I love historical stuff, not to mention pre-historic stuff, and I love to disseminate knowledge about the things that I love. Some things about collections management is not so fun, like dealing with mind numbing data entry and/or uncooperative computers/software, but it’s all in a day’s work. With some luck, we can find volunteers to help out with some of those things, too. As with most non-profit organizations, we would be dead in the water without our volunteers. I cannot reiterate this fact enough: We have the best volunteers ever and we would not be as good at what we do were it not for them, so Yay for our volunteers!