Row by row, Medicine Hat's history preserved for future generations
CHARLES LEFEBVRE
It’s an area not everybody gets a chance to see, but if you do, it takes your breath away.
Behind a locked door in the Esplanade Archives only accessible by a keypad, contains items that only a lucky few get to view. Framed photos line the walls: a panorama of the city in 1912, photos of soldiers who served from the area in the First World War, early baseball and hockey teams. You turn a corner, and you see a vast row of cabinet storage, which seems to stretch for miles when you see it for the first time.
Philip Pype, archivist for the Esplanade, wearing white gloves to protect the material inside, rolls a wheel similar to that on a bank vault, opening the cabinets. On the shelves are rows and rows of boxes, neatly organized row by row.
Whether it is city council minutes from years past, photographs showing the Beveridge Block in its heyday, or design plans, it’s there and catalogued for reference.
And it isn’t just paper; 16mm film strips from local television stations, an acetate disc of local music awaiting digitization and locally produced videos are also among the items in the archives right now, awaiting preservation.
“It’s a pretty broad range of any documentary medium that communicates the history of our area,” he said.
The most common items donated to the archives are photographs and organizational records, says Pype, noting the archives has an estimated one million photographs and a kilometre of historical records.
“I think photographs are really popular; they just communicate a time and a place and an activity clearly,” he said.
“We get approached by a lot of organizations who donate their organization records, their minutes, programming materials for different activities and fundraisers they’ve done, things like that too.”
Pype notes the archives receives around 1,000 inquiries a year from users.
Above the rows of shelves is the permanent collection items for the museum, preserved to slow down the effects of time. Museum Curator Bruce Shepard estimates between 25,000 and 30,000 items are in the museum’s permanent collection.
“Every item that we look at has a story that is part of this community’s story, and it helps to illustrate, and in effect prove the story happened,” he said.
“It’s very important to be able to go back to our past, and re-evaluate it periodically, and that’s one of the things having this collection does.”
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Esplanade, an exhibit took over the main gallery from October 2015 to February 2016, showcasing items that told the story of Medicine Hat. Many of the items were first collected back in the late 1940s, when the Historical Society of Medicine Hat and District began collecting artifacts to tell the city’s history.
Both the archives and the permanent collection have relatively similar processes to determine whether to accept an item. The process starts with a meeting with the person to discuss the artifact.
“People come to us every week, I’m guaranteed one or two calls a week,” said Shepard. “People in Medicine Hat are phenomenally generous. In many cases, they don’t even want a tax receipt. They just want the item looked after or they want to find a good home.”
Shepard asks the person to tell him the story of the item to determine its origin to determine if it has a Medicine Hat origin or tells the story of the city and region. He adds they also look at the collection to determine if the item is already in the possession of the museum, and if it may have a better story compared to the one in the collection, or if they need another of the item (it’s always good to have a backup of the item, just in case, says Shepard). Another important consideration: An item’s condition. If the cost of preserving the item is too expensive, Shepard says the museum cannot accept it. He noted the SS Medicine Hat, a steamship which sank in 1908 and remnants being discovered a century later in Saskatoon, as an example.
“Those items were waterlogged for a century,” he said. “In order to have them and display them would have required a considerable expenditure to have a proper water tank to look after water logged items,” he said. “I could not justify going to council to ask for money for the expense.”
Once a transfer of items is negotiated, and the item catalogued, preserving the items becomes key. For archives, it means storing film and papers in acid free boxes, with the
Philip Pype, Esplanade archivist, grabs a box of negatives off the shelf in the Esplanade Archives.
lights off when possible.
Items for both the museum and archives are kept at a temperature of around 20 degrees Celsius, and a relative humidity of 50 per cent (the recommended guidelines for mixed collections). Even when items are on display, there are no windows to avoid damage from the sun.
“Everything decays over time,” said Shepard. “What we do is intervene in that natural process, and we basically try to slow it down.”
“Our goal is to save our region’s history for as long as possible,” said Pype. “We have to find a bit of balance there, because there is also no point in keeping it and just locking it away. We find that balance where we house it properly, we have environmental controls at the Esplanade, it’s not overly exposed to natural light, but we also want to bring that material out to the reading room or perhaps copies of it.”
Pype says the Archives has also been
working to digitize as many items as possible for preservation, with grants and significant help from volunteers. Much of the photography collection has been digitized. When an item cannot be digitized by the Esplanade, such as the music recordings, it is sent out to experts.
For Pype and Shepard, it is important to have items such as the archives and the permanent collection to ensure the stories of the city and region can be told and remain accessible for future generations.
“It’s the stories of Medicine Hat, which then allows us to take them, and to weave new stories, like we did with the First World War exhibit, to help the community understand itself,” said Shepard.
“Our collections that we have here have been over 60 years in the making,” said Pype. “The community has invested a lot in making sure this history is preserved and it’s an honour to be one of the people responsible for keeping it safe and making it accessible for the community.” ■
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