News

2014 Newsletter       

ARROW LAKES HISTORICAL SOCIETY

by Rosemarie Parent

 

We wish to extend to all a late but happy and good New Year!

 

1. Requests from far and wide for assistance continues and we are happy to be able to help – at least most of the time, many from emails from people who have looked at our website. We had our website upgraded this past year and if you have not looked at it for awhile, check it out – www.alhs-archives.com

 

2. BC Gaming grant was for $5,000 this year and we will try for an extra thousand next year to help with Kyle’s wages.

 

3. Our big project this past year has been to finish the 2 storey addition to the Centennial Building by Lonestar Construction.  We kept plugging away for more funding and will be able to move in by February if all goes well. We used the $20,000 for office equipment from the Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance (CKCA) for desks, tables, chairs, shelving and so on.

 

4. Another grant from CKCA for $4,000 was used last year to help with Kyle Kusch’s wages to scan, organize and categorize the over 10,000 photos collected by Milton Parent. We are applying for another of these grants because there is still much to do.

 

5. Kyle will be putting on a course to do this photo work soon – David Coleman, Ken Williams and I will do this but others are welcome to learn how.  This training will be in the evening because some people cannot attend during the day.

 

6  We hope to increase our hours to include another day and will be open Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. We will need more people to work in the office and if anyone is interested please advise.

 

7. Our AGM will be held on 4th April this year at the new building from 2-5 p.m. We encourage all to come and bring friends if you wish. The BC Gaming grant requires that we send in the AGM minutes and want to see a good attendance of members at the meeting. Bruce Rohn, a long time director, will be joining us and will be bringing some of his wonderful photos for you to see. Greg Nesteroff another director will be showing his slides of postcards of the West Kootenay.

 

8. We hope that you will visit the office and see what we have and what we have accomplished. Also if you have any archive items or information that you would like to donate, we would appreciate receiving them.

 

9. We hope to do another virtual museum project this year on Halcyon Hot Springs  We will be writing a grant to do this and because we have a lot of photos and information, should be fairly easy to do. This will give us another $2500.

 

10. Our trip this year near the end of June or September will be to West Arrow Park.  This will be a picnic. Please advise if you are interested and we will contact you.

 

11. Family Tree program – this program was started a few years back and we need someone to do the work that we started. We did enter several families including the Aaltens, Bairds, Baileys and Parents – trying to do the early pioneers first. Anyone interested in doing this, please advise.

 

Hopefully, you will continue to support our society by keeping up your membership with us.

 

Memberships are  $5 per year.

Life Memberships are $50.

 

Meetings are held at our office during the day – the 3rd Thursday of the month at 3 p.m.. We don’t meet during the summer or at Christmas but we do have a Christmas party mid December for members and guests. New members are always welcome.

 

Our office hours are year-long Tuesdays and Thursdays 10-3 except for 2 weeks during the Christmas season. (This will change when our addition is finished to Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday  – hopefully by fall of 2014)

 

Our mailing address is Box 819 Nakusp BC  V0G 1R0

Phone/fax is 250-265-0110

Email address is [email protected]

Alternate phone is 250-265-3323

Alternate email is [email protected]

Website is www.alhs-archives.com

Contrary to what people think, the Society has to pay for a lease, insurance, telephone, internet, photocopier maintenance, computer supplies and repairs, stationery supplies, postage and other incidentals. We are a non-profit with no assistance from municipal taxation. Therefore, we decided that we must list our services and prices as below.

Requests which can come in by phone, mail or email are answered as quickly as possible. If you come in to the office and ask for help, we will give you records, photos or information to go through and make suggestions of who in town might be able to assist you. There is no charge if you do your own research but a donation is expected. If you want photocopies done or photos the prices are listed below.

RESEARCH FEES

B&W PHOTOCOPIES: 8.5X11” – 25 cents each
11×17” – 50 cents each

PHOTOGRAPHIC REPRINTS:
Colour or B&W:
Photograph paper 5X7” $6 each
8×10” $10 each
Regular paper 5×7” $4 each
8×10” $7 each
Thicker paper 5×7” $5 each
8×10” $8 each
DIGITAL COPIES OF PHOTOGRAPHS:
JPGs via email – $5 per image
JPGs via CD – $5 per image

ARCHIVAL RESEARCH – $25 per hour for our time if we do the research.
If you come into the office and do your own research with assistance, a donation is expected. We will find the books, newspapers, photographs that you need. If you want copies of photos or need the use of the photocopier, the prices above apply.

IMPORTANT NOTES:
– Reproduction costs stated above reflect actual costs to the Archives and are subject to change without notice.
– Shipping charges if a small light envelope will be $2 each.
– We have no way to copy large maps or documents but you can use your camera successfully.
– Our newspapers are bound and cannot be copied without damage to the book. However we have made copies before binding of most items and these can be found in our categorized looseleafs.

POSTAGE FOR OUR HISTORY BOOKS:
– $15 for one book
– $20 for two books
– $20 per book for Eastern Canada and the US locations.
– For all other destinations, we will have to check costs with Canada Post.
–
TO USE OUR PHOTOGRAPHS AND INFORMATION FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION:

– There will be a cost for the use of our archive material of $50 plus a cost of $50 for the use of our projectors and someone from our organization will have to be on hand to protect our material.

Almost five years ago, the concept of building a two-storey addition for an Archives office onto the Centennial Building was an inspiration of the late Milton Parent, archivist of the Arrow Lakes Historical Society (ALHS) and writer of seven history books on the history of the area.

Too numerous to mention, many groups helped over the following years with funding but the support given by the Columbia Basin Trust (CBT) with a $100,000 Development grant and the sum of $72,775 from the Halcyon Home Foundation gave us the courage to start building. None of the many grants written to the Province or the Federal government were successful except for the Federal New Horizons senior’s grant of $25,000 to go toward the hydraulic lift. This would benefit the many seniors who could not climb the stairs to visit the Library as well as to visit the Archives. Most of the remaining funds were obtained from our citizens of the town – some who donated and also supported the necessary five times that we requested funds from the yearly CBT Initiative grants, three obtained by the ALHS and one from the Museum and another from the Library. Donations in lieu of flowers netted us over $10,000 in Milton’s memory as well. All the other organizations in town gave some funding and people like Eric Waterfield gave of his time and equipment many times over.

We had enough funding to finish to lockup last fall – 2012 – and over the winter the furnace, ducting, rough plumbing, electrical work was completed. The dry walling is up and mudding or taping of the gyproc is now ongoing. We almost have enough funds to complete by December which is our goal, with a move to the new premises by year end.

The Archives office is on the top floor of the addition with a wheelchair accessible washroom in their space for all patrons to use. The bottom floor has a large showcase built in for the Museum and storage for the Archives, Library and the Village.

The addition is on Village owned property being built onto the Village owned Centennial building. They will be the protectors of the extensive archive material that has been gathered for years by Milton Parent and the Arrow Lakes Historical Society. We were concerned that if there was not a continuation to keep the Society going or the lease would change where we are currently at, that the material would be put into storage which would damage the fragile items.

We have a new website for ALHS. As well as having a new design, it will allow us to make more frequent updates.

If you have any suggestions for things you’d like to see on the site, please contact us.