A new public archives facility in Grande Prairie will help preserve the history of Alberta’s South Peace region for future generations.
“People can come and contribute their own history,” Ellyn Vandekerkhove, executive director of the Southern Peace Regional Archives, said at Wednesday’s grand opening.
Formerly located at the Grande Prairie Museum, the archives now occupy 7,555 square feet of space at Center 2000, a community facility in Grande Prairie’s Muskoseepi Park.
In the reading room, citizens and researchers can examine archive materials. The ingredients are stored in a vault, where they are located in boxes on metal shelves.
Dozens of people, including public officials from Grande Prairie and the region, attended Wednesday’s grand opening.
The archives currently occupy more than 7,500 square feet at Center 2000, a community facility in Grande Prairie, Alta., shown here. (Dennis Kovtun/CBC)
“We are the largest archive in the entire Southern Peace area,” Jack Lawrence, the facility’s archivist, said in an interview.
“We preserve the documentary history of the region, and this includes not just large organizations, but families, individuals, even some government records and non-profit organizations.
“The aim is to try to get a comprehensive picture of the history of the area, and this includes everything from paper, official documents, diaries, even film, photographs and digital records.”
Lawrence is excited about the archive’s move to a new home.
“It’s very exciting to be in this new space where we can grow, preserve records for the future,” he said.
Jack Lawrence is an archivist at the Southern Peace Regional Archives. He is very pleased that the archives have been moved to the new facility. (Dennis Kovtun/CBC)
Citizens ask interesting questions to the archive staff. One of Lawrence’s favorite questions came from someone looking for information about the history of his home.
“We learned that this was actually designed by a specific architect and was supposed to be state-of-the-art in the 1920s,” he said.
Archive is also a repository where organizational records are stored.
“We have organizations that are interested in preserving their own history or looking back and trying to remember it in the future,” Lawrence said.
A scientist’s legacy
Vandekerkhove said one of his favorite visual collections is the WD Albright collection.
William Donald Albright was a scientist who moved to Grande Prairie in the early 20th century. His scientific work focused on the agriculture of the region.
Albright was the founder and first superintendent of the Beaverlodge Dominion experimental substation. Today it operates as the Beaverlodge Research Farm, home to Canada’s honeybee research program and other agricultural research efforts.
Vandekerkhove said Albright was known for his speaking engagements and other outreach work throughout his career as a scientist.
The archive now holds a large collection of research and presentation materials, including 764 glass lantern slides likely created between 1930 and 1942.
Originally black and white, some of the images were later colored by hand.
Records include this lantern slide of hollyhocks blooming in September, taken in 1926. Photographed by WD Albright. (Submitted by Southern Peace Regional Archives)
“These are amazing to look at because a lot of them are hand-painted so people can see the details of the colors, especially since a lot of them are made up of plants,” Vandekerkhove said. said.
“You can see the flowers, the fruit, all these details, and it’s all meticulously hand-painted.”
family history
Dan Wong is a senior mechanical engineer at Beairsto & Associates in Grande Prairie. He also chairs Grande Prairie’s police commission.
In an interview after Wednesday’s grand opening, Wong said the archives helped him learn more about his family’s history in Canada.
“I was looking for some family history because I knew my great-grandfather settled here,” he said.
Arthur Wong came to Canada from China in 1918 and settled in the Grande Prairie area.
Dan Wong, a senior mechanical engineer at Beairsto & Associates in Grande Prairie and chairman of the city’s police commission, used archives to discover new details about his family’s history. (Dennis Kovtun/CBC)
Wong wanted to know if there were any records about his great-grandfather from that time and found several stories in the Grande Prairie Herald-Tribune that provided a snapshot of what Arthur Wong’s life in the community was like.
On Dec. 28, 1944, the Herald-Tribune reported that “about 60 people,” including a group from nearby Sexsmith, Alta., “seated down to a wonderful banquet given by the Royal Cafe in Grande Prairie” on Christmas. Arthur Wong was the owner of that place.
“The royal executive, Arthur Wong, was on the chair and welcomed the guests and wished them prosperity for the coming year,” the newspaper reported.
Dan Wong lived most of his life in Grande Prairie. “I knew the Chinese community had really strong roots here, but I didn’t know where it originated,” he said.
“It’s really fascinating to go back in history and learn what impact your family had on the community you grew up in,” he said.
Wong also found an article in the archives that mentioned her great-grandmother. “She was the first Chinese woman to come to Grande Prairie,” her great-grandmother said.
“I found another article in 1951; [that she] and my great-grandfather was reunited after 30 years.”
Wong said it was “really eye-opening” to learn that her great-grandfather was one of the first immigrants from China to settle in Grande Prairie and that her great-grandmother was the first Chinese female immigrant in the area.
“But it really impressed me to know that we had gotten so used to it,” he added.