Our trip to Peachland marked the ORHDP team’s first site visit for our project. And what a site visit it was!
We set up our equipment in the document viewing area of the Peachland Museum, a former Baptist church built in 1910 with an unusual eight-sided architecture. This historic building was the subject of several documents we scanned, including photos of its original construction and later its opening as a museum. Being in a building with such an evident history, as well as obviously being surrounded by museum artifacts, was an inspiring start to our project. In all, we completed over 600 scans on site over the course of four days.
I (Emma) personally worked on a few more modern collections, featuring photos of Brenda Mines from the 1980s, the construction of a sewer along Peachland’s downtown road, and the aftermath of the Walter’s Ltd Packinghouse fire. I also, I must say proudly, went through all of Peachland Memories 1, the first volume of a photo history of Peachland and the surrounding areas.
The rest of the team was also hard at work. Eamon took to the task of scanning massive assessment rolls using our new document scanner. Sharon visited for a day to work with and understand the museum’s database. Alex determined what documents previously scanned by the museum’s volunteer team would be suitable to migrate and generally oversaw our operations. For our first site visit, we had already settled into a good rapport as a team.
We didn’t leave with just the scans, either. I also bought a two-volume colouring book set on the history of Canada. Entertaining and informative!
