Ten years ago, the Musée Héritage Museum held an exhibit called Looking Back: Fabulous Photos from St. Albert's Past, which was a big success and in more ways than one. In a way, it inspired the cultural institution to start a new annual series of photo exhibits for the city’s youths to show off their photographic talents.
A decade seems like a long time, but curator Joanne White said it went like a fingersnap because she was so busy with other projects.
“We didn't even realize it had been quite that long because we'd started doing the Take Your Best Shot exhibits instead as a photo exhibit. We’d received a lot of donations and had also found other things in the collection that hadn't been scanned. We've been trying to digitize everything as much as we can and we're still working away at that.”
“The exhibit that we did 10 years ago was very popular and so we thought we'd try it again.”
She, and the other museum staffers, thought it was time to revisit an old classic. Consider Looking Back Again as a sequel of sorts if you must, one that offers visitors new views on old pictures, some of which were provided courtesy of the St. Albert Gazette. There is also a fine selection of photographs that have been accessioned into the museum’s collection since 2009.
The show contains more than 60 images from its archives, some of which are new donations while others were retrieved from its collection of 20,000-plus images. Public donations of historical material, however, is what really allowed the exhibit to come to fruition.
It promised to be poignant, comical, captivating and nostalgic, and it does not disappoint. The photographs cover the gamut of St. Albert life going back as far as 1880 (with family photos and an underground look at one of the local coal mines) and reaching up to the mid-1990s (with images of Grade 12 students going to their graduation and a scene from the opening celebration to the 1994 Alberta Winter Games).
Blasts from the past
Those who recall the Klondike Inn will probably feel an ache in their memory banks once they see the old building again. They’ll probably feel the same way when looking at the St. Albert Drive-In or the city’s 75th anniversary picnic, which arrived complete with amusement rides.
There are scenes from the Rainmaker Rodeo that go way back too. Some of the photographs extend even further into the past and you can tell just how far back by admiring the clothing and hairstyles that people had.
There’s one shot of a driver in a demolition derby where a collision causes him to be thrown from the vehicle. The Gazette photographer captured him frozen in mid-air.
“It is a great shot,” White continued. “A lot of the photographs that we have are amateur photographers, but of course, the collection from the Gazette is professional photographers. They were able to capture some new things. The bull rider… some of those were really amazing shots.”
“I was trying to choose things that either had somebody doing something interesting or wearing interesting clothes, or buildings or things that might be sentimental to people like the Klondike Inn and the drive-in. Things like that that people would get a kick out of seeing.”
Exhibits like this are also a really good way for the museum to get more information from the public about events or other subjects.
“People will tell us more things than we know about some of the images or who people are or they might clarify dates that might help us with specifics of events. It's really useful to us. We're always happy to get new material as well.”
Many of the prints will also be available for purchase on the last weekend of the exhibition, although any photo can also be special ordered from the archives anytime.
If members of the public have any photos that they think might be of historical significance and that might be appropriate for the museum’s collection, they should call 780-459-1528.
Looking Back Again runs until Sunday, Sept. 8. Visit museeheritage.ca for more information.
