On Thursday night the Revelstoke Museum and Archives held its annual general meeting.
The meeting came following a year that saw the museum register a modest profit, and revenue generated from admissions increase by about $1000.
“Obviously we’re doing something right,” said curator Cathy English, speaking to about 20 attendees on Thursday night.
English’s weekly brown bag history talks, which take place every Wednesday around noon, had an average attendance of 31 in 2017.
Highlights from the meeting included the approval of next years budget, a discussion of planned events for 2018, and the appointment of a new board member, David Rodger, who recently moved to Revelstoke from Iqaluit, and has an M.A. in history from the University of Western Ontario.
“I’m really looking forward to learning how the board functions and contributing to the community through the museum,” said Rodger.
Highlights from 2017 include the museum’s Snapshots of History exhibit and launch, the showing of a Kiss in the Wind at the Revelstoke Performing Arts Centre, and the museum’s Suffragette march through town last May.
In 2017 the museum received just over $110,000 in grants, $50,000 of which came from the City of Revelstoke.
Some of that money went to hiring four summer students over the summer who ran children programs, conducted research, and worked in collections cataloguing artifacts. But the museum also has about 40 volunteers who contributed roughly 800 hours of their time in 2017, which helped the museum get out into the community 17 times last year for public presentations, and add 364 artifacts and 1200 photographs to their archival collection.
Admissions have increased steadily since 2014-15, and English and the board of directors, who English praised, said they look forward to the some of what the museum has planned for next year.
The next exhibit currently being planned is called Stories Hidden Beneath the Surface and will look at some of the communities that were lost due to flooding when the Hugh Keenleyside Dam was built at Castlegar in 1968 by the Social Credit government of premier W.A.C. Bennett.
The exhibit is timely as the Columbia River Treaty will be renegotiated for the first time since it was signed in 1964 this year.
English will be holding a public meeting with tea and coffee on Feb. 2. and invites anyone with information, stories, or photographs about some of the communities displaced by the dam project to come and share them. Among the communities that will be highlighted are Mt. Cartier, Arrowhead, and Sidmouth.
Stories Beneath the Surface is expected to open on Thursday, May 17.