Photo Friday: Chaos

This week's entry for Photo Friday:


Using the magic of digital photography, our Research Assistant and I went through about a dozen shots while laying on our backs in order to get the picture above. It is a picture of our white museum gloves, which we use to handle artefacts. Like we tell our visitors (especially our young ones), the oils in our fingers are damaging to the pieces; therefore we need to use white cotton gloves while working with our collection.



We have many, many pairs of gloves!

By Kristin Meier

Kids Day at the Queen Street Market

On Saturday, our Research Assistant and Exhibits Assistant took the day off from regular tasks to man our heritage games booth at the Queen Street Market.

The Queen Street Market started in 2003, growing this year to every weekend during the summer. This year, the organizer of the market added a day for children to the calendar of events. There were face painters, entertainers, a petting zoo - along with our own historical games.

The bubbles were really popular with the very young:



Then there was the sidewalk chalk for the slightly older crowd:



Our Research Assistant demonstrating jacks for a new generation of kids:



To make sure our assistants had fun, we booked them next to the petting zoo:



It worked. The assistants were over-cuted by the bunnies:

Shelling Scimitar Peas

The Port Moody Station Museum has a CPR heritage garden, based on railway gardens of the 1910-1912 period.

It's a mostly volunteer endeavour, with volunteers planning, planting, weeding, researching heritage period varieties and, of course, harvesting the goodies.

Sometimes Museum staff members need to help out.

On one of Vancouver's last sunny days, we stayed out after lunch to shell the scimitar peas:



Some of the seeds will remain at the Museum for next spring's planting. Others, we'll trade to other heritage gardeners around Canada. Still others will be on sale at Treefest, a free celebration of horticulture in the neighbouring city of Coquitlam.

Message in a Barrel

Our Postcard Barrel is set up and ready - it even made the front cover of the Tri-City News on Saturday!

The barrel project is based on the Post Office Barrel on Floreana Island in the Galapagos. An English whaling captain started the tradition of having a barrel with unstamped letters on the island so that sailors starting out on a voyage could leave their letters there for other sailors returning home to hand deliver.

Today, instead of whalers, tourists leave postcards in the barrel for others to deliver.

We found out about this barrel a few months ago when some Museum staff members sent their own postcards into the barrel as a result of reading about it in the Tri-City News.

We got in touch with Kyle MacDonald, the Port Moody Secondary grad who delivered our postcards and is working on a book about his experiences delivering postcards.

Turns out Kyle wants to set up other barrels around the world, with one per country. He already helped install one in Crete.

So Canada's Official Postcard Barrel is here in Port Moody now.

We have three barrels in the Museum's collection. First we used an extra small one. It was too small.

Then we decided to use the biggest barrel in our collection.

It took some work getting the barrel out of the Museum's vault.

We had to roll it through a labyrinth of artefacts, then uphill and over the railroad tracks to the Museum's front door:



After we installed the barrel, we realized something. It was too big.

Luckily we had another barrel upstairs on display.

This is the Dustbane Co. of BC Barrel that is now the Postcard Barrel:



Sisal Sweeping Compound is "a heavy duty compound built for use on concrete or wood floors in factories, garages and warehouses where heavy soil loads exist." It has dust-absorbent wood fibre mixed with oil and sand and is red.

We've got a few postcards inside already.

There is no more Sisal Sweeping Compound in the barrel.

Annual Squash Race

From the Gabriola Sounder: "Too many zucchinis growing in the garden? Stick some wheels on them and see if they will be the winners this year in the annual Islander Days Squash Race."

Seems as if it's happening this Saturday. BC Island life must be nice.

Comox Valley Cemeteries

Through the Comox Valley Family History Research Group, we ran across a page on the cemeteries of that area. The group has transcribed graves at the Courtenay Civic Cemetery, the Cumberland Cemetery, the Denman Island Cemetery and the Hornby Island Cemetery; these are available by emailing the group.

This page led us to the British Columbia Cemetery Finding Aid, which "contains more than 344,000 entries and includes 264 British Columbia cemeteries and 2 Washington state cemeteries." You can search by surname, cemetery, location or region.

John Murray, the name of both the Port Moody pioneer and Royal Engineer and his son who named many of Port Moody's streets, yielded 58 entries.

Once a researcher narrows down the search, he or she can use the resulting reference number to contact other organizations for more information. A very good tool for those of us interested in geneaology!

First Fish Ceremony

From the Clearwater Times, an article on a First Nations ceremony:

About 100 local residents, aboriginal and non-aboriginal, from Clearwater, Barriere and other North Thompson communities, attended a First Fish ceremony hosted by Simpcw First Nation at the Raft River salmon viewing platform Wednesday afternoon.....

The event started around noon with the construction of a traditional pit oven.

Salmon, as well as potatoes and other vegetables, were layered in the pit with fir boughs, saskatoon branches, rose hips, grasses and rocks. Five hours later the contents were removed for a feast.

While the food cooked, members of the Chu Chua youth group and others took part in traditional games such as Lahal.

In the Lahal game, participants divide into two teams. Two members of one team hold a bone in both hands. Members of the other team try to pick which hand holds a white bone. Finding which hand holds a white bone means winning a stick. The game ends when one team has all the sticks. Other participants beat hand drums and sing while the game is going on. Experts at the game use many specific had movements, maneuvers and tricks.

Day Camp Tour

This morning we led a tour of about 20 children around the Museum.

When we got to the telegraph, we thought we'd quiz the kids on Morse Code.

"Can anyone guess the name of the code used to send telegraph messages?"

One girl put up her hand. "Braille?"

"Sorry, no, that's what blind people use to read. I'll give you a clue. It starts with an M."

A little boy yelled out "Malaysian!"



When we got to the parlour, everyone thought our floral arrangement looked like it was lifted from the movie Beauty and the Beast:

Log Debarker

A sign for the Log Debarker finally went into place:



The City of Port Moody installed the Log Debarker (which we always called the "Log Roller") back on April 14 of this year:



The Log Debarker got a fancy foundation under the Moody Street Overpass:



Many visitors pass under the Overpass to walk to the Museum and they always ask us what this interesting piece of machinery is.

Photo Friday: One

(Click on photos to view larger sizes.)

Both these typewriters are located in the Telegraph Room of the Port Moody Station Museum.

This Royal typewriter was made by Byrmes, Hume Typewriters Ltd. in Vancouver, BC. It was purchased and used in this station from 1954 to 1967 for billing carloads.



This typewriter is an Underwood typewriter made by Elliott Fisher Limited in Toronto.

Where is the key for the number 1?

By Kristin Meier

McNair Mill

From Kris, our Research Assistant:

For the past several weeks I have been working on the transcription of the 1920 tax rolls of Port Moody. This way, in the future if someone wants to look up the owner of a lot of land, it will be much easier than sifting through the 40 lbs. books.

Also for the past several weeks, Jennifer, our Programs Assistant, has been working on a walking tour brochure of the inlet trail, located next to the museum in Rocky Point Park; she has been asking me if I had found the records of Robert McNair, the owner of McNair Mill, a mill that burned down and whose remnants can still be found along the trail.

Today, I finally located those records, which means that Jennifer can accurately confirm where the mill was located.

After my discovery, I went to the basement vault to look at the lot map of Port Moody from 1918 only to discover that the lots of land that Robert McNair owned had not yet been divided on that map; as a result, we are going to try to locate a slightly newer map that would tell us exactly what land Robert McNair owned.

Chinese Bunkhouse Remnant

A few months ago we wrote about a visitor who told us about the Chinese Bunkhouse, just to the northwest of the Museum.

Turns out we have a portion of the bunkhouse in our collection. It's a melted ball of glass with rusty nails imbedded within it.

Murder Mystery

Darrell, one of our Board members and a super-duper volunteer, helped us out with the Halloween Haunted Train last year, Sinterklaas' visit at Christmas, and always with our main website.

Something else that Darrell does is write scripts and act in our yearly Murder Mystery Dinners.

We're just starting to pull strings together for our October 22 dinner this year and Darrell has some updates on the script:

Hi!

I'm working on a new script for the Oct 22 Murder Mystery dinner. I've planned to set it at the end of WWII in light of this being the Year of the Veteran and the timing of the dinner being only weeks before Remembrance day. A chance for men to dress up as Johnny coming home from war to meet their sweetheart. Time for seamed stockings or at least drawn-on seams with wartime rationing.

Darrell

Postcard Barrel

Meet Randy the Raccoon.

The design for our commemorative stamp:



We're almost ready with our postcard barrel! More information coming soon.

Wasp Nest

This morning, our volunteer, Master Gardener Tom, asked us if we thought his hand looked bad. He pulled off his gardening glove to show a big welt on his palm.

While he sifted the compost bin soil for the garden, some angry insect slipped into his glove to attack him.

Just before closing, our other volunteer, Handyman Dave replaced the lights at the back of the Museum with more energy-efficient lightbulbs. A wasp stung him too.

Seems like the wasps built themselves a nest at the working part of the Museum in the back, between two pieces of wood sheltered by a moss rug.

Lost Cat

A week ago, someone was walking her cat across the street from the Museum.

The cat saw a crow and ran off to catch the crow. The cat disappeared under the Museum's platform, much to the owner's distress.

Even worse, the owner of the cat had booked a flight out of Vancouver that day.

We promised to keep an eye out for the cat. We put out a bowl of water for the cat on the railway tracks (the ones in front of the Station are just decorative - the cat would have been in no danger if it had been lured onto that set of tracks).

The curator did see a grey cat sitting on the picnic table one morning. The cat escaped before anyone could act.

Yesterday the owner returned from her vacation and dropped by to see if we caught her cat. Alas.

Hippie Influx

While doing some research through old issues of the Coquitlam Herald, we came across, among the ads for eight grapefruits for a $1 and the Fashion with Lu columns, a page 2 editorial on Tuesday February 6, 1968 that sided with Port Moody city council's decision to turn down a business license for "the Vancouver hippie newspaper, Georgia Straight."

Only one alderman voted against outright refusal of this "undesirable publication." The concern seems to be that these "obscene" papers would be "peddled to gullible school children who do not always know the difference between good and bad."

The editorial ends with this:

When their paper receives no public support or attention, these misguided people [the publishers of the Georgia Straight] will have to shave their beards, put on their shoes, and seek employment in the "straight" world they claim to despise.

There are enough problems in the world without the largely imagined or self-induced woes broadcast by the hippies and their sympathizers.

A few days after this editorial, some Vancouver papers remarked on this anti-hippie stance, enough so that the editor of the Coquitlam Herald felt a need to elaborate on why hippies were so undesirable. One of the reasons was that hippies knew their long hair would prevent them from gaining meaningful employment yet they insisted on keeping their hair.

It seems as if this fear of hippies permeated most of the Tri-Cities area of which Port Moody is a part. A spring edition of the Coquitlam Herald had a front-page article on Port Coquitlam police preparations for the hippie migration from Vancouver.

New Acquisitions

"It seems like every week this summer we've received a donation," said the Museum's collection manager today.

Last week we got more antique office supplies and this morning we got three trunks, one of them filled with goodies: hats, caps, army bags, army-issue lady's slips, and an olive drab denim suit.

The star donation today was a pouch filled with a gas mask, field dressings, eye goggle cleaners and other as yet unknown chemicals.