And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 1999 15:17:12 -0400
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Lynne Moss-Sharman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Kamloops Chase Museum
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Chase museum welcomes visitors
Kamloops Daily News
July 26, 1999
The Chase museum opened its doors Saturday to welcome village
residents, recognize contributors and honour its mature patrons.
More than 30 visitors strolled through the former Catholic church,
brushing past 4,000-year-old lithic tools, logging saws and an elegant 1915
bar only recently returned to the region.
“An event like this gets the people in the museum community
together. We can acknowledge contributors, both past and present,
and maybe even sell a few memberships,” museum curator C0elia
Nord said of the gathering with the air of a family reunion.
Chase Mayor Martin Koppes, standing in for MP Nelson Riis,
presented 12 museum volunteers with lifetime memberships and pins
from the federal government in recognition of the Year of the Older
Person. Honours were given to Elsie Reid, Fred and Helen Beatty,
Roy and Fran Preston, Isabelle Ferguson, Tim Gibbon, Ivan Pal,
Cecil and Doreen Harbidge and to Rae Ferris and Nellie Currie and
their deceased husbands.
“We try to have something like this every year to mark the opening
of the season,” said museum president Roger Behn. “We are
recognizing people who made significant contributions, whether
through volunteering or gifts of artifacts, who made have had to stop for
one reason or another.” Larissa Lutjen, summer museum attendant, explained
the history of Chase as one of fits and starts.
When Whitfield Chase pioneered European settlement in 1865, the
area’s Shuswap people were already dying from diseases that would rob them
of 70 per cent of their population before 1903.
White settlers enjoyed a boom after 1908 when the American-owned Adams
River Logging Company came to town, installing utilities, providing jobs
for 800 men and fuelling a vibrant cultural scene. But the firm relocated
in 1925, having felled most of the prime lumber, and left residents to
weather the Depression without a key employer. “The museum is getting
better every year and I want to say congratulations on a job well done,”
Koppes said, his back to a
chrome-covered cash register. Down the aisle to his left, a 1912
edition of the Chase Tribune graced a display table. Its yellowed
pages awash in fine lines of type, the paper retailed for $2 per year with
headlines declaring Big Sale of Lumber... Wharf at Scotch
Creek... The Kentish People in British Columbia.
Nord said the museum introduced several exhibits this summer. A
second-floor display chronicles the area’s logging history. She also
acquired a metal safe used by the Canadian Pacific Railway station
at Chase. Pointing overhead, she began another tale of local lore. The
massive painting which covers one wall -- a rodeo scene brushed by J.H.
Smith early in this century -- is backed with linoleum. As one might expect
in the quirky saga of Chase’s history it was put to good use for 20
years... as kitchen flooring.
"Let Us Consider The Human Brain As
A Very Complex Photographic Plate"
1957 G.H. Estabrooks
www.angelfire.com/mn/mcap/bc.html
FOR K A R E N #01182
who died fighting 4/23/99
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.aches-mc.org
807-622-5407
