Michelle Mason reported that the City is no advertising for 2 new Board Members to fill vacant spots.
Thank you to those who came out to help with the filming of the 2025 video project with Foregrounds Media. The video will showcase everything the Museum, Archives, and Roselawn have to offer.
The Corporate Drive campaign has begun with all the request letters having been sent out.
The City delivered topsoil for the Heritage Garden to be used for planting next spring with the help of the Garden Club.
We are applying for a Francophone Exhibit Project: Access to Heritage Grant from the Museum Assistance Program.
Elyse Richardson, our Exhibit and Research Assistant Intern has completed another initiative in her grant - an outreach and a partnership with another City department to help bring the museum out into the community through a new temporary exhibit in the Vale Health and Wellness Centre. It consists of ten enlarged historical photos from the Museum's collection that caption the history of sports and recreation in Port Colborne through the years. The exhibit is displayed along the gym hallway. This installation is just one part of the expanding outreach initiatives by the Department of Museum, Heritage, and Culture.
Michelle also gave the Archives report provided by Michelle Vosburgh. The second Speakers Series presentation was held on September 21 and it combined a lecture/presentation with an accompanying cemetery tour on the theme of Victorian mourning practices and artifacts. Anna gave the main lecture, with Katelynn presenting a few of the artifacts from the museum collection. Michelle Vosburgh led a tour at Oakwood Cemetery that afternoon on the same theme, focusing on the changing styles of cemeteries, cemetery markers, and the themes of epitaphs on markers. It is has been requested that we do this again in the future.
Michelle researched and wrote scripts for the upcoming Lantern Tours; two of the three stories are fictionalized versions of episodes of local history.
Staff were asked to quickly prepare three research reports on properties for consideration by the Heritage Committee at their meeting today.
Michelle is now finalizing the research and presentations for the October 26th Speaker Series on explosions in Port Colborne's history, and for the November 9th presentation on the 1820s debate over the location for the southern terminus of the Welland Canal. This is also part of the Welland Canal Bicentennial Travelling Lecture series.