BARRHEAD- The Barrhead Centennial Museum will open its door to the general public for the first time in close to two years on July 1.
"I am making an executive decision," joked Barrhead and District Historical Society president Anna Churchill.
The not for profit historical society operates the museum. The last time the museum doors were open to the general public was in the fall of 2019.
"We were in the process of getting ready to open the doors when COVID hit and then we couldn't open our doors," she said.
Public health restrictions also made it difficult for the board to meet, saying most of them are older and are uncomfortable holding their meetings virtually. The result is that the society has not met as a whole for serval months, noting they have postponed their annual general meeting (AGM) several times. They will finally meet on July 6 at the Glenreagh Community Hall at 7 p.m.
However, Churchill said the decision to open could not wait until the AGM, so she took a straw poll and it was decided that they would open once the bulk of the public health restrictions lifted on Canada Day.
As for how the initial few days of the opening will look like, that will be largely up to the museum's curator, but she suspects the day-to-day operation will remain mostly unchanged.
As for what people see, if they are a regular visitor, Churchill said that has changed dramatically, at least in the first two exhibition halls.
A year ago, the museum added a display on the early black community that existed in Campsie in the early 1900s, including information on a Jim Crow style school in the late 1910s or early 1920s.
"We were hoping to do more," she said.
Churchill talked about the display at Edmonton's Royal Museum on the Beavers, a prominent black family who settled in Campsie.
"Mrs Beaver was a quilt maker," she said.
So when someone dropped off pieces of a quilt at the library (then donated to the museum) saying they were from Campsie, they believed there might be a connection to the Beaver family.
However, when a Beaver family member saw the items, he had no recollection of them.
"We have no lead to who it might have belonged to, but we added it to the display aesthetic reasons as well that if someone sees it, we might find out what the true story is," Churchill said. "If we don't learn the origins of the pieces of the quilts, they will have come down. You don't want to show something as belong to something when it really doesn't."
The museum has updated its display on the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) and the RCMP and it is something they hope to add to as part of a new Peace and Justice exhibit.
Part of the reason for changing the display to a more general theme is because not all of the items are not connected with the NWMP or RCMP.
"A lot of the stuff, like the billy club, comes from the states," she said.
The change people might notice when they walk through the door is the museum's war display has changed from focusing on the Second World War to women and the war effort at home.
Again, part of the reason for the change, is that the items did not belong to the era or that they could not authenticate the item or the story.
"That is our biggest challenge. We want the items in the museum to reflect our story and not just items that are brought it in," Churchill said.
It is a lot of work she said, adding that is why the society is inviting people who share the love of storytelling and history to their AGM.
"Help build our museum to truly reflect our history and our story," Churchill said.
Barry Kerton, TownandCountryToday.com
