St. Albert Grain Elevator Park's Dominion Day and Father Lacombe Chapel's Oh Canada!

Silver Grain Elevator, 1990

Photograph courtesy of Musée Héritage Museum, St. Albert Historical Society fonds

Tomorrow will be the first day that visitors can step into the silver grain elevator in over a year.  Both the grain elevators have been undergoing restoration since the spring of 2010. Although the silver elevator opens tomorrow, the grand opening of both elevators will occur in the fall.  The Musée Héritage Museum invites everyone to the St. Albert Grain Elevator Park for Dominion Day to see the restoration, have a tour of the park, enjoy some snacks and participate in various activities for children.

Location: 4 Meadowview Drive, St. Albert
Time: 12-5
Phone: 780-419-7354

Also...

The Father Lacombe Chapel, Alberta's oldest surviving building, is having an event tomorrow for Canada Day entitled, Oh Canada!  The interpreters will be providing hourly tours of mission hill, as well as providing a scavenger hunt, activities for children and ice cream.

Location: St. Vital Ave, St. Albert
Time: 12-4
Phone: 780-459-7663

Mission Hill, 1948

Photograph courtesy of Musée Héritage Museum, St. Albert Historical Society fonds

Happy Canada Day and we hope to see you at our events!

The Mission Makers Opening Tomorrow

The curator has been working hard preparing an exhibit which will open tomorrow.  The exhibit is entitled The Mission Makers and features Albert Lacombe, OMI and Alexandre Taché, OMI, two oblates who began the mission in St. Albert.  We've included in this blog post some photos of the exhibit set-up.  The exhibit opens Saturday June 11 and will be up until November 2011.

Happy International Archives Day!

The archives at the Musée Héritage Museum would like to highlight one of its projects in honour of International Archives Day.  The archives has recently begun processing photographs donated from the St. Albert Historical Society.  This photograph collection consists of over 1000 photographs ranging from the 1880s to 1970s.  With the help of the Archives Society of Alberta (ASA), these images will be available to the public online in the early fall via the ASA database: http://asalive.archivesalberta.org:8080/access/asa/photo/.

Here is a sneak peak of some of the photographs in the collection...

Main Street, 1911 -1921

Bishop Vital Grandin, ca. 1880 - 1890

Beer Room, Bruin Inn, 1930

St. Albert Store interior, 1930

A. Labelle Meat Market, 1930

Articulture in St. Albert

Partnership between Musée Héritage Museum and Michif Cultural and Resource Institute:



We were excited to partner with Michif Cultural and Resource Institute for Articulture. On April 9, a number of people came out to learn beadwork at the Musée.  In keeping with the early Métis heritage of St. Albert we would like to offer more workshops on beadwork within St. Albert.

MJ instructing the class




Beadwork



At the Musée Héritage Museum we offered a small beading project inspired by our Métis Bead Work exhibit.  For a small fee participants learned to bead a small Wild Rose brooch.  This workshop will be offered again.



Beadwork

 

At 10 Meadowview lane (the oblate house) the Michif Institute will offer traditional Rattle Making.  For a small fee participants would learn how the ancient ones made rattles for ceremony and for their babies.

Pattern for Fire Bag

These two courses would be run simultaneously for afternoon programming. The date is TBA.

There should be an age limit with these teachings; the participant should be 10 years of age and over.

Submitted by Sharon Morin

Lead Aboriginal Programmer



Musée Héritage Museum Seeking Anyone with Memory of Local Eastern European Families

As part of a new historical research project, Musée Héritage Museum is looking for residents familiar with several Polish, Russian and Ukrainian families from St. Albert and area to help with the preservation of an important aspect of St. Albert’s history.

The Musée’s latest project is researching the history of the Polish, Ukrainian and Russian communities of St. Albert. Throughout the 1900s people from these countries settled in St. Albert and area and helped enrich the community. Polish Oblate Fathers brought in by Bishop Vital Grandin helped develop the community in the 1890s and 1910s, and people like Marie Wolniewicz (who taught at the Brick School for 40 years), the Hauptman’s (who ran the popular Bruin Inn and Sweetheart Jewellers), and Mary Sernowski, who worked at the St. Albert and Edmonton markets for 40 years, have all helped enrich the social, cultural and economic life of St. Albert.

Eventually a written history, a new educational program and online exhibit will be produced that will document these important families. These will help bring attention to an important part of St. Albert’s history that has only recently been examined in detail.

We are looking for as much information as possible about the following pioneering families:  Banack (Banach), Bondarevich, Douziech, Hauptman, Klak, Luszczewski, Martyna, Meleshko, Muszczynski, Poloway, Popow, Pudlowski, Romanko, Sernowski, Skrobot, Soloduk, Wachowicz, Wolniewicz, and Zyha.

If you, or anyone you know, grew up in or around St. Albert and is either related to or has information about these families and their history, we are interested in speaking to you.  The stories you relate to us are important to how we write and portray the unique history of these families and St. Albert itself. In order to present the most complete story possible, a continual search is also underway for any photographs, documents, or artifacts related to these families and their farms, gardens and businesses, from any year or decade. 

If you would like to help enrich and preserve the history of St. Albert and area, and ensure that this important history will be preserved for future generations of St. Albert residents, students, and scholars, please contact the Museum at the following address:

Ann Ramsden or Rene Georgopalis:                       

Musée Héritage Museum                                             

5 St. Anne Street T8N 3Z9                                         

(780) 459-1528

Email: museum@artsheritage.ca

Or contact the historical researcher directly:

Michal Mlynarz: (780) 907-6126  

Email: michal.mlynarz@ualberta.net

 

Anna Chevigny and her daughter Marie Wolniewicz, 1930s.

Photograph courtesy Musée Héritage Museum, St. Albert Historical Society fonds.

Marie Wolniewicz was born in Poland in 1900, and moved to St. Albert by 1907. For four decades she worked in the St. Albert school system, teaching generations of children from the community.

Mary Sernowski and her son Victor, early 1900s.

Photograph courtesy of Musée Héritage Museum, St. Albert Historical Society fonds.

Mary Sernowski was born in Ukraine in 1907 and arrived in Canada in 1928. From 1934 until she passed away at the age of 90, she delivered her garden produce to city markets in St. Albert and Edmonton.