Sunshine Coast Museum & Archives
Museum Hours  
​Tuesday - Saturday      
10:30am-4:30pm     
​
  • Collections
    • Photograph Collection
    • Newspaper Archives
    • First Nations
    • Fishing for a Living
    • Marine Transportation
    • Telecommunications
    • George & Charlotte Gibson
    • Helen McCall - Early Photographer
    • Beachcomber Relics
    • Farrell Family
    • Early Logging
    • Early Agriculture
    • Inglis and Woodsworth Families
    • Howe Sound Cooperative Cannery
  • Learning
    • Podcast Features
    • Education Kit
    • Genealogy >
      • Cemeteries
      • Churches
      • Genealogy Links & Records
      • Places of Research
      • Schools
      • Societies and Support
    • Museum at Home
    • Museum School
    • School Classroom Visits
    • Historical Videos of the Sunshine Coast
  • Blog
  • News/Events
  • Shop
  • Sunshine Coast
    • Gibsons
    • Roberts Creek
    • Sechelt
    • Halfmoon Bay
    • Pender Harbour
    • Egmont
  • About Us
    • Contact Us!
    • History & Mandate
    • Museum Services
    • Make a Donation!
    • Membership
    • Employment
    • Volunteer
    • Staff & Board of Directors
    • Links

First Blog, First Thing You See: Garnering Imaginative Interest

5/30/2014

0 Comments

 
Museums are a challenging medium to negotiate because they deal with intersecting stories that can be both close to peoples’ hearts and distant at once. Sometimes, people with a passionate interest in a particular area struggle to breach the time gap between past and present. Thus, the study and commemoration of the past can be dubbed alienating, irrelevant, or boring. Furthermore, if you do not belong to a group of people whose stories are continually privileged over others, the idea of history is not just alienating, but a potential source for dangerous historical erasure. Here at the museum, as in any museum, we are limited in our presentation. (I do not mean this is in a purely financial fashion, though unlimited funds to explore Sunshine Coast history via hover-board would be amazing.) What I really mean is that any presentation of the past relies on a person’s unique imagination and interpretation. Our job is to present information or artifacts. This is not to say that museums are in any way completely inclusive or unbiased; that is impossible. What I will argue is that the past is present in our everyday lives, whether we notice it or not. The real work in establishing a connection to the past lies within our own imagination.

At the Sunshine Coast Museum and Archives, the clearest example for me is our exhibit Time Lapse: The Past is Present. This presentation, which my fellow summer student Nico installed last week, is incredibly simple in nature. It consists of pairs of photographs: one archival, one relatively present-day. All in all, the exhibit documents the same locations in Gibsons Landing and the Sunshine Coast one hundred years apart. To some, a century may seem like a long time, but in comparison with the vastness of recorded human history (say nothing of the Universe!), a century is less than a blip. Both of these perspectives play out in the exhibit photographs as well as throughout the museum. In the instance of the store in Roberts Creek, for example, the one-room shack supported by roughly-hewn wood stumps is nothing like its present-day form. The same goes for the primitive logging camps, which morphed into the industry they are today with the help of technological advances. Archival photographs from Gibsons Landing provide a less dramatic shift. Though Molly’s Reach Restaurant has changed significantly, the original façade is still decipherable in the archival photograph. While Gibsons Harbour has grown in size and the dominant composition of boats has changed from industrial to recreational, the harbour is still recognizable.

I will never be a fisher in Gibsons Landing during the Great Depression, scouring the coastline in my handtroller for subsistence. Nor will I ever be a member of the Squamish Nation, patrolling the waters on canoe during the thousands of years before European colonization. But when I see pictures of the Gibsons harbour one hundred years ago, I can smell the salty sea air that I experience every morning on my walk to work at the museum. I can see people walking along the docks, readying their boats for a day at sea, while a young family walks their dog along the seawall. I can hear the bustle as shops and restaurants in Lower Gibsons set up their chairs and wares. I know my life is drastically different, but with a little bit of imagination, I’m almost there. I encourage you to join me.

-Emma

Picture
The government wharf and lower Gibson's Landing in the 1930s. The photo, by Helen McCall, is taken from the tidal flats in Gibsons harbour which were wiped out by the marina. The Methodist (United) Church and other buildings are visible. Soames Hill is on the right.
Picture
A summer evening at Gibsons harbour last year (2013). I need to leave for work earlier so I can get a picture this year and in the morning! I'll post that later...
0 Comments

    Categories

    All
    BC Historical Newspapers
    Black History Month
    Book Launch
    Borrowed Body
    Canoe Culture
    Canoe Journey
    Collaboration
    Community Building
    Digitization
    Exhibit Exchange
    History Of Racism
    Immigration
    Irving K. Barber Learning Centre
    Japanese Internment
    Konishi Family
    Newspaper Digitization
    Open Mic
    Peformance Poetry
    Peninsula Times
    Performance Poetry
    Squamish Nation
    Sunshine Coast
    UBC Library

    Archives

    December 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    June 2022
    January 2022
    September 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    November 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    July 2018
    June 2018
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    October 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    September 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012

    RSS Feed

     Home     |     Collections     |     Learning     |     Events     |     Gift Shop     |     News     |     The Sunshine Coast     |     About Us     

© Copyright 2022 Sunshine Coast Museum & Archives
716 Winn Rd., Gibsons, BC. (604) 886 8232


Donate Now Through CanadaHelps.org!