Jim Sincock's Water-skiing Record

We received an email from someone in the U.S. state of Georgia last week:

"Just recently I was presented with the question "What is the longest distance anyone has ever traveled on waterskis?"

After doing many searches, I came across the Port Moody Sation Museum website and was happy to find some information regarding the question. However, I have not been able to find the actual record-breaking distance traveled by Jim Sincock.

If at all possible, please reply letting me know the distance traveled by Sincock."

Silly us, we forgot to tell you in our last post.

It was 367 km or 228 miles.

Reunion

On Sunday, a woman and her two sons came to pick up a photo that they ordered the day before. The envelope with the photo had her name and the price of the materials to print it out.

It was a grainy black and white photo of a young man.

"We asked the collections guy to blow it up to the biggest size," said the woman. "How much do I owe you?"

"That'll be five dollars."

"My husband has the money, let me call him over. He's just nervous and waiting outside."

"...?"

"Oh, this will be the first time he will ever see his birthfather."

The husband stood outside smoking a cigar with shaking hands. His father had died in 1995 before he could track him down. The detective hunt had led to our Museum.

Once they had the photo, the wife, the two sons and the husband gathered around on the station platform to open the envelope.

"Look, dad, he has your nose!" said one of the sons.

Cyril Littlebury in Today's Tri-City News

Read about Dudley Booth and his collection of Cyril Littlebury's photographs in today's Tri-City News:

For about 10 years, a dapper gentleman with a large-format camera, neat penmanship and an interest in news, shipping and industry roamed the streets and harbours of Vancouver. Between 1922 and 1932, Cyril R. Littlebury took thousands of photos that recorded how the wheels of industry turned in the city.....

The photos were ..... of Vancouver city life in the 1920s and during the Depression years, including beach scenes, pictures of boats and buildings, such as Hotel Vancouver, that were under construction at the time, news events and Stanley Park view points.

The collection includes pictures of the dedication of Pier B.C. and the Harding Memorial in Stanley Park, photos of the Vancouver cenotaph being built, as well as of many remarkable ships and airplanes. There are even photos of hobos living in shanty towns south of what is known as Yaletown, near False Creek, during the Depression.

Heck, just read the whole article.

Police Ledger 1913-1923

For a school tour next week on Port Moody history, I wanted to include a scan of the police ledger.

Taking a lesson from the New York's Lower Eastside Tenement Museum, which I visited in July this year, I decided to scan a page and put it in a plastic sheet (we can't afford to laminate too many things). The scan will be something kids can handle, that looks like the real thing. Then I will type up the information so that kids can answer questions about policing of the era.

So I asked the Collections Assistant to unlock the display with the police ledger and search for something without anything too incriminating. Car accidents and errant cattle. That sort of thing.

However, when we started at the beginning of the ledger, in 1913, when the city was incorporated, we found mostly "drunk and disorderly" or "assault"! Now that's a little too racy for elementary school kids.

But it was an incredible revelation to see what skeletons our city has in its closet. A murder in 1923, vicious dogs that had to be put down, runaway chickens, charges of lunacy, threats of murder and at least two groups of boys running away from their schools. One Port Moody pioneer mentioned in the history books was there too (we won't name him here), for the ubiquitous "drunk and disorderly." His punishment was to leave the city and "sober up."

Another interesting observation is that about half of the people charged with crimes were white and the other half were Chinese, Japanese or Sikh. We can't say if there were aborigine people among those charged until we do a thorough study.

This is fascinating because history seems to wipe out its non-white players. At the Port Moody Station Museum we have a display about the Chinese and a photograph of mill workers that include Sikh men. But we are still striving to augment this and to include the Japanese presence. In our bible, The Early History of Port Moody, we have post-it notes at all mentions of the Chinese, Japanese, Sikh and black pioneers which we somehow have to translate into meaningful displays.

So to find that half of Port Moody's early criminals were not white means two things. First, we wondered if more charges were brought against minorities and hence made their way into this police ledger. Second, the appearance of so many non-English names means that there was much more of a "minority" presence in Port Moody than we previously believed.

We've been working on some blog posts about the black and the Chinese presence in Port Moody for some time. We'll have to start digging those up and publish them.

Thank you for reading.

By Oana Capota

Volunteering at the Port Moody Station Museum

We've noticed people googling "Volunteering at Port Moody Museum" and "Port Moody Historical Society Volunteer." We noticed that those google searches didn't really lead anywhere useful.

But we're here to tell you otherwise.

Yes, we have many volunteer opportunities!

Read below about three volunteer jobs for which we always need help. Call us at (604) 939-1648 to inquire about any of these positions.

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HISTORICAL NEWSPAPERS RESEARCH INTERNSHIPS

We are looking for 2-4 interns who are interested in Port Moody’s history and would like to assist in making an inventory of the area’s history.

The Port Moody Station Museum is a source of archival material and interns will help organize this information to make it more accessible.

VOLUNTEERS REQUIRED: 2-4

DESCRIPTION: Working with the Port Moody Station Museum’s newspaper collections, interns will compile dates, article contents and related photos of all Port Moody-related subject matter in newspapers from the Twentieth Century and work backwards to Nineteenth Century newspapers. Interns will also work on a Port Moody timeline together with the Museum Assistant.

In the second stage of the project, interns will create and/or provide input in creating a historical newspaper database, and enter all data relating to print material on Port Moody to the database. Depending on time restrictions and condition of the newspapers, interns may also be required to scan newspaper articles for digital preservation.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Detail-oriented
• Interested in history and museum procedures
• Reliable
• Some computer experience (for the second part of the project): Microsoft Access & Scanning

TIME: Any day from 12 noon to 4 pm (some morning hours are also available depending on Museum staff availability)

DURATION: Internships available year-round; we ask that interns commit to four months.

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TEA ON THE TRAIN VOLUNTEERS

DATES: Sundays in 2005:

• November 27
• December 4
• December 11
• December 18

TIME: 12:30 - 4:30 pm

Tea and cookies provided

DESCRIPTION: Started in 1998 by Kathy and Mado, two enthusiastic volunteers, the Museum’s tea car Sundays still take place when help is available. To allow these events to continue, the Museum needs more volunteers to serve tea and treats to guests on the train, set-up prior to the event, and clean up after the event.

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ORAL HISTORY TRANSCRIPTIONS

The Port Moody Station Museum's ongoing oral history project started in 1975. The Museum has hundreds of interviews on tape, CD and digital format. The interviews contain a wealth of information about the City and the Museum hopes to eventually make this information available to researchers, visitors to the Museum and possibly online.

VOLUNTEERS REQUIRED: No limit

DESCRIPTION: Volunteers transcribe the interviews according to oral history standards to create a Word document as well as a paper copy of each interview. Each volunteer will be trained and supplied with guidelines.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• Detail-oriented
• Interested in history and oral history procedures
• Reliable
• Microsoft Word

TIME: Volunteers are assigned oral history CDs and transcribe them from home. During weekdays volunteers may be able to work from the Museum, depending on staff availability.

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SPECIAL EVENTS VOLUNTEERS 2006

• Easter Egg Hunt
• Canada Day
• Halloweeen Haunted Train
• Murder Mystery Dinner

Call the Museum at (604) 939-1648 for more information.

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BENEFITS & REIMBURSEMENTS FOR ALL VOLUNTEER POSITIONS:

• CAPP hours
• Learn local history
• Invitation to volunteer-only party in January
• Coffee/tea

Diamonds and White Cotton Gloves

London's Natural History Museum closed its exhibition, Diamonds which opened on July 8, after police got hold of information that the diamonds were in danger of theft. The exhibition's scheduled closing was originally set for next February.

The exhibition had a number of famous diamonds and jewellry on display:

• The De Beers Millennium Star, a 230-carat diamond - white, pear-shaped, priceless and flawless, as well as the centrepiece of the exhibition: was mined in the Congo by De Beers in the early 1990s. "It took more than three years for the company's cutting experts to shape the original 777-carat stone with lasers."
• The Steinmetz Pink, the world's largest fancy vivid pink flawless diamond.
• The Ocean Dream, the world's largest naturally occurring deep blue-green diamond.
• The Incomparable, a yellow stone cut from an 890-carat rough diamond and weighing in at 407.48 carats, the third largest cut diamond in existence.
• R&B star Usher's watch, which features his face in coloured diamonds.
• A bejewelled dress worn by Samantha Mumba at the premiere of the film Spider-Man 2.

The De Beers Millennium Star had already been the target of theft in 2000 - the armed thieves were foiled by crystal replicas.

The most important thing that we want to point out is, if you look at the picture of the Millennium Star at the top of the first article, you will note that the diamond handler is wearing white cotton gloves. Just like ours.

Museums & The Web

We were mentioned on Museums & The Web!

The Museums & The Web blog ("Taking a professional look at online web initiatives launched by museums and galleries worldwide") has been online since August and (we're guessing) is written out of the UK. It's a pretty good read for anyone interested in reading more about museums.

Edward Cole

This morning we received a copy of the Edward Cole DVD.

Those readers who have been with us since the beginning of this blog may recall some filming that took place at the Museum over the nights of May 15 and 16 this year.

Writer-director Thom Stitt and Producer Sam Kim, both students at the Vancouver Film School, sent us the DVD along with a thank you note.

The students transformed the Venosta into The Vestige, "The last train to the end of the world," during the long nights of filming.

The students made good use of the Venosta's sleeping compartments and mock-dining car: the whole car looks very mysterious. They also managed to get the rocking of a real train: our railar rests on tracks that don't go anywhere.

Their website doesn't have much yet, but check it out in upcoming weeks.

More Filming at the Museum

From the October-November and December-January editions of the Station Telegram:

Below are all known appearances of the Museum and its contents in film and television. If anything is missing, let us know and we’ll update this timeline.

1989: Narrow Margin, starring Gene Hackman, used artifacts from the Museum as props.

Fall 1990: MacGyver used the Station and the Venosta for an episode.

January 1991: Six Port Moody Secondary students use the Museum office as a backdrop for a mystery; film entered in the 1991 BC Film Festival.

July 1991: Paradigm Films’ Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus, starring Charles Bronson and Ed Asner, uses our baggage cart, suitcases, chests, wooden barrels, and lamps as props.

October 1994: Paramount Pictures’ The Marshall used some of our "railway" props.

February 29, 2000: Red’s Classic Theatre presented Sex, Lies and Videotape from the Museum.

December 2001: The Museum appeared in a Toyota commercial.

Fall 2003: Morse Telegraphy: How It Changed the World was filmed at the Port Moody Station Museum. Morse Telegraph Club President Lavina Shaw wrote: "It has been distributed to all the Morse Telegraph Club Chapters across North America and is shown to a large number of student groups attending the Samuel B. Morse Museum in Poughkeepsie, NY and the Alfred Vail Museum (Speedwell) at Morristown, NJ, as well as other railway museums in the USA and Canada."

September 8, 2004: Electric Playground films Reviews on the Run at the Museum.

September 20, 2004: Shaw TV’s The Express filmed at the Museum.

October 23, 2004: CityTV also filmed the first of their five-part Halloween special at the Museum for their news hour (aired October 25) featuring Curator/Manager Jim Millar recounting the manifestations of our resident ghost.

May 15-17, 2005: Edward Cole, written and directed by Vancouver Film School student Thom Stitt, is filmed in the Venosta, which becames The Vestige.

June 20, 2005: Shaw TV’s ICTV filmed interview with Museum staff and volunteer.

June 29, 2005: Shaw TV’s The Express filmed at the Museum.

October 8, 2005: Shaw TV’s ICTV filmed the launch of the Heritage Tour of Inlet Trail.

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The Station Telegram is the newsletter of the Port Moody Heritage Society. We send it out bimonthly to all our members.

Film Pictures

When we were researching hauntings for the Dark Side of Port Moody Bus Tours, the Honourary President of the Port Moody Heritage Society, Al Sholund, passed on some photos to me.

The photos, as you will see below, were taken of the exterior of the Port Moody Station Museum during the filming of a movie. The station fronted as the outside of a bar, with interior shots in what is currently Charlie's Mexican Restaurant on St Johns Street. (It was in the latter location that film crews had problems with a ghost.)

This is our altered front entrance:



We had a good laugh over this shot of the "Night Owl" pub - you can still see the CPR Telegraphs sign:



Here's the Night Owl pub sign:



And a final picture of the altered station:



Al can't remember what movie this was from. We've had quite a few shot here. If anyone knows from what movie these pictures came, please let us know!

Trains and Honey

Port Moody is sunny after a month of non-stop rain. This is bringing people in to the Museum.

This morning, for example, we had a father come in with two children. The father looked at the blue washing machine in the Freight Shed and said that he used to get his fingers caught in the wringer.

The son asked us if the telegraph was difficult to use. We told him that, like anything else, it takes practice to master the skill.

"Like Lego!" he said.

Then his little sister asked, "Do trains make honey?"

Huh?

She pointed out to some of the pipes from the Ioco Refinery that we have on dislay: the tar on them glistened with a honey-sort-of-look.

Antique Roadshow

On November 13, we had our third antique roadshow of the year. Like the ones people are most familiar with on TV, we hire local appraiser Al Bowen to come in for an afternoon. Our appraisal shows, started in 2003, are rather popular here in the Tri-Cities, with almost all of them sold out.

Al Bowen, with a great sense of humour, doesn't just tell you the monetary value of a work. He goes over its history, puts it in perspective to larger historical events and gives advice on how to care for the antique.

At this last show, Al really nailed in that everyone should be diligent about using acid-free paper. The danger otherwise is discolouration and fading.

Then there is the fact that an item's value goes up if it is kept with its pair or in its set. One lady brought in a statuette, whose companion piece went to her sister. Families tend to lose things, is the lesson we inferred.

Al also applauded a lady who kept her great-great-grandfather's sword together with his photo (again it adds to the value of the sword), but added that she should write down the stories passed to her as well.

We saw some very interesting antiques: a sketchbook from 1920s Shanghai, a Russian enamel cigar case, jasperware, a travelling medical kit, a coronation album, and other beautiful heirlooms. A personal favourite was the series of dogs playing poker. We'll write more about that later.

Remembrance Day

For Remembrace Day this year, all the Port Moody Station Museum did is put up the World War One Honour Roll and a banner again. It is rather fitting as there are only five veterans left in Canada who served in World War One. We also did a huge event for Canada Day with our local war historians.

We noticed that many people visited our blog by googling "Remembrance Day Port Moody." We hope all these people found out that the Port Moody Royal Canadian Legion did have a ceremony yesterday.

We recommend in the future that everyone look for veterans' events on the Veterans Affairs Canada website, though, as it is up to the events' organizers to add their events, not all will be listed. Port Moody is not listed, but there are many more events for the rest of the year taking place across Canada and it acts as a timeline for military-related events from Canadian history.

(Many of Port Moody's events are available through the community pages of both the Tri-City News and the Now newspapers.)

To make up for the lack of posts yesterday, board member and webmaster Darrell Penner submitted a poem he wrote for Remembrance Day.

More on Museum Blogs

There have been other discussion on museum blogs that we've noticed:

In October, the Wall Street Journal published "For Attention, Museums Get Gossipy Online" (subscription required). It doesn't say much we didn't know:

After trying open houses, audio tours and other traditional methods for engaging visitors, some museums are starting to use Web logs to attract interest. Museum officials say that these blogs, which offer views of installations in progress, chatty stories about staff members and links to the art community, are an effort to make their institutions seem more approachable and less stuffy.

The examples it gives are the Washington's Katzen Arts Center's blogging about installing their 500-pound tree trunk and the Minneapolis's Walker Art Center blogging about installing their own 2000-pound steel and concrete elephant made of steel, concrete and painted animal skins. As Katzen Arts Center Director Jack Rasmussen says, "We're trying to make it transparent so it's not this mysterious monolith."

The other museum blogs referred to in the article is that of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts (a joint blog that mentioned us recently) and the soon to-be-launched Smithsonian blog.

According to Paul Schmelzer of Eyeteeth (who was writing in August), there isn't enough precedent in arts-related museum blogs. Apparently off our radar was the off-beat Beer Can Museum in Massachusetts and its blog.

However, we think that there are, so far, a few arts museum blogs (see Bronx Mus(eum)ings) and none on community history.

There is Museums and the Web ("Taking a professional look at online web initiatives launched by museums and galleries worldwide").

For some reason, that us non-techie museum types are struggling with, we are nowhere near the top of google lists if we do a search for "museum blogs." Presumably other small museum blogs are just as obscure as a result.

Cyril Littlebury Photo

We just talked to the Tri-City News, one of the ever-helpful local newspapers that have done so much for our little museum.

They will include one of Cyril Littlebury's photographs in their Sunday edition!

(Make sure you check their website that day - they don't keep archives so we can't link to the photo.)

Museum Blogs

A few months ago, the Canadian Heritage Information Network (or CHIN) included an article on museums and blogging just as we launched this blog. This month's newsletter again highlighted blogging.

They recommended Hanging Together, the blog of a non-profit organization that deals with libraries, archives and museums.

We've found two other interesting cultural organization blogs:

The UBC Botanical Garden Weblog: With categories in botanical art, climate change, herbaria, invasive plants, conservation, diseases and pests, food and medicine, and "Novel Uses of Plants," this is one of the best examples out there for information on the plant world.

The Moxie Blog: "The best damn blog about starting an art-house theater in Springfield, Missouri in the whole entire world!"

Then there is also Signs Never Sleep, the blog of a sign shop from New Hampshire.

As for art blogs, Zeke's Gallery in Montreal, collected over 400 of them, including us.

Hopefully with CHIN's promotion, we'll see more strictly museum blogs soon.

Cyril Littlebury

At the end of the month (see sidebar), we'll be hosting a talk and slideshow of a collection of rare photographs taken by Cyril R. Littlebury, a man whose ten-year career ended in 1932, a casualty of the Depression, as he succumbed to cancer.

Now how did we get involved with Littlebury?

Through Dudley R. Booth.

The Port Moody Public Library referred Dudley to us and Dudley told us how he came to get this collection of Cyril's photos.

In 1946, his dad had a truck. Because he had a truck he got all sorts of jobs. Many of the jobs had to do with carrying off junk. He got called to the house of Cyril's father, Arthur, also a photographer. The elder Littlebury died on November 1, 1945 and was buried at the Ocean View Burial Park (now Ocean View Cemetery, in Burnaby).

Dudley's dad saw a wooden briefcase and took it to his son instead of to the dump.

Dudley saw that inside the briefcase was stuffed with envelopes full of negatives. He saved them for years, not doing anything with them, until he grew up and discovered the magic of the iMac computer and the Epson High-Resolution Scanner.

Dudley never told us what either R stands for.

Record-Breaking Water-skier

In August our Exhibits Assistant curated her second temporary display for the Port Moody Station Museum's Mailroom. She chose the theme "Port Moody Leisure" and included toys, trophies and sports equipment.

One of the artifacts in the display was a lone waterski.

"Maybe that's Jim Sincock's water-ski," said a staff member.

"Who?"

"The water-ski record-breaker. Al Sholund wrote an article about him in Focus."

One of the two honourary presidents of the Port Moody Heritage Society and our local historian, Al Sholund, wrote about Jim Sincock's world record for the longest non-stop point-to-point water-ski trip over salt water in the December 2004 issue of the City of Port Moody's newsletter. You can read this article by clicking here (go to page seven).

In 1965, Jim Sincock, a 37-year-old New Westminster water-skiing daredevil, was waiting in line to buy some fuel for an attempt at a water-skiing record. Another man standing in line overheard and came over to hear more about the attempt to break the record. He introduced Jim to Bud Espeseth, who worked for the Imperial Oil Company or Ioco. When Bud heard about the attempt to break a record, he talked the City of Port Moody into getting involved.

According to Jim's calculations, Port Moody's Rocky Point Park (next to the current location of the Port Moody Station Museum) was far enough away from Olympia, Washington to make up the length needed to break the record. The previous record for long distance water-skiing was made by someone who skiied back and forth across the Ohio River.

Foiled by seaweed on his first attempt, Jim set off on July 28, 1965 and broke the record. Jim donated one of the water-skis to the Port Moody Historical Society, which became today's Port Moody Heritage Society, and one to the Olympia Chamber of Commerce. The water-ski we have in our collection is the one donated to the Port Moody Historical Society.

The Museum Assistant decided to hunt down the American water-ski. Surely the Olympia Chamber of Commerce donated theirs to the local museum. Rereading the article by Al Sholund, we decided to send an email first of all to KGY radio in Olympia. Nobody answered. It turns out that the original radio station owner passed away and with him all knowledge of the event.

Then we looked up Jim himself in the phonebook. There was only one of him in all of Canada and he lives in the city next door, Coquitlam! Right away the Museum Assistant phoned him. He was indeed our Jim Sincock and we scheduled an oral history interview with him for the following week.

Jim turned out to be as charismatic as you would expect of daredevil. Along with the interview on MP3, we borrowed two of his scrapbooks to scan Port Moody-related articles.

It turns out that Jim retired from water-skiing after he broke the record in 1965. But he didn't turn his back on water-skiing.

On Monday morning, Jim Sincock's daughter, who was our first visitor that day, told us that after he retired he taught his dog, and later his cat, to water-ski. Even though the cat looks soaked and grouchy in photos, Jim's daughter says the cat came to enjoy water-skiing on a coaster.

Quilt Gone Home

The Hoy Creek Quilters are a group of about ten core quilters, sometimes more as ladies come and go from their group. Using recycled scraps, the quilters construct their blankets for the RCMP (or Royal Canadian Mounted Police, for those of you who don't live in Canada) to give to trauma victims.

Every year the Hoy Creek Quilters come to the Port Moody Station Museum on Canada Day to demonstrate their craft in the station's former waiting room. On Canada Day 2004, the Hoy Creek Quilters decided to turn their attention to us. They decided to sew a double-sized maple leaf quilt to raffle off in 2005 as a fundraiser for the Museum.



It took them a year but they got the quilt ready for July 1, 2005. We chose that date to launch our raffle ticket sales.

The quilt was to be top prize, with an estimated value of $500. Other Port Moody businesses, the Stylin' Divas Salon and the Flying Fish Grill were also generous with prizes.

This gave us four months (as per our gaming event license) to sell the 500 tickets. We chose the night of the Murder Mystery Dinner as the draw date. At 9 PM sharp that night someone won the quilt.

This morning that someone arrived to pick up the quilt.



As we said goodbye to the quilt, the winner remarked, "My children will love this."

Halloween Haunted Train Highlights

As promised here is the Venosta railcar decked out as a hearse:



We could only upload a few photos online because, first of all, many of the photos were blurry, and, secondly, we do not yet have a Pro account with Flickr, which hosts our pictures. (We plan to get one starting in January.)



Above we have the welcoming crew of the Halloween Haunted Train.

Sometimes the kids would see Carver and get frightened before they even entered the train. Usually we told Carver to take off his mask and introduce himself. A few people asked if that was his real name.



Trevor as the Black Bride scared visitors from his alcove behind the Venosta's sleeping compartments. We thought he was quite pretty. The Museum's staff are big fans of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, by the way.



This ghoul and his barely noticeable partner haunted the Venosta's kitchenette near the exit of the Haunted Train. We don't recognize who these two guys are; if anyone knows their names, send us an email so we can acknowledge their help.

Update: Andrew wrote to us to give us his name: "On the blog, it was mentioned that the names of the ghoul and his partner were required. I have them, being the ghoul himself." The other ghoul is Derek.