Bulkley Valley Museum
1425 Main Street V0J 2N0 Smithers, BC, Canada

It's that time of year again! The Museum is seeking applicants for its 2021 summer jobs. Details can be found on our website at https://bvmuseum.org/summer-2021-employment/. Application deadline is April 18th.

March 17 marks the 1 year anniversary of the day the Museum shut down for the Covid-19 pandemic. Over the next 11 weeks we continued the work of preserving and presenting our local history through online content. We also recognized that we had a duty to document this significant moment from a local perspective for the future. In response, we commissioned a local photographer to capture photos of Smithers as it was under that initial lock down. Check out some of the photos in our new blog post: https://bvmuseum.org/covid-19-in-photos/

We're doing one last push to get responses to our Community Feedback Survey! Visit https://bit.ly/3lcbcZx to complete this 2 minute, anonymous survey to help guide the strategic planning of your community museum. Thanks to all those who have already participated!

Get your Monday started by checking out this new creepy/cool (jury is still out) "Deep Nostalgia" photo animation tool from MyHeritage. We uploaded a photo of Sir Alfred Smithers, the town's namesake, to test the software and were blown away by the lifelike results! Visit https://www.myheritage.com/deep-nostalgia to try it with your own photo.

What do we do well? What could we do better? What vision do you have for your community museum? Complete our Community Feedback Survey and help guide our next five year strategic plan! Visit https://bit.ly/3sFxtCq to complete the short, anonymous survey.

It's #BCHeritageWeek! Celebrate by taking a look at historic places and landscapes in Smithers through our Google Tour! Check it out: https://bit.ly/3u7JHo3 #smithersbc #northernbc #bchistory

In case you missed it.... The Moose featured our mammoth rib story a few weeks ago! Check out the article here, which links to our blog post about the work currently happening at SFU Archaeology: https://www.mybulkleylakesnow.com//babine-lake-mamoth-rem/

February is Black History Month! The BC Black History Awareness Society website features digital resources highlighting the contemporary and historic achievements of Black BC residents, including former Smithers resident and first Black person named to the BC Supreme Court, the Honourable Justice Selywn Romilly! Visit their website to read about Justice Romilly's career, and other stories of Black history in BC. https://bcblackhistory.ca/selwyn-romilly/ Photo: Interior News clipping about Romilly's appointment to the BC Provincial Court, October 16th 1974.

Congrats to the Central Park Building Society on their successful funding application to the CERIP program! As a tenant of the Central Park Building, and advocates of built heritage preservation, we are very excited to see the exterior rehabilitation project move forward. Thanks Nathan for letting us help spread the good news :) To see more about the CERIP program, visit https://heritagebc.ca/uhi-cerip-funding-announcement-febru/

Happy Valentine's Day, and Family Day! The Museum will be closed on February 15th to allow staff to enjoy the holiday. In the meantime, celebrate love by checking out some 1960s-era wedding photos from our Richerson's Studio fonds! Some of the photos, including this one, remain unidentified - let us know if you recognize someone so we can update our records. Photo: P6609, unidentified wedding party, 1960s. UPDATE: the photo has now been ID'd as the wedding of Fred LePage and Sheila Jackson :) https://search.bvmuseum.org/list

Celebrate Family Day weekend in a Covid-safe way with the BV Museum and Smithers Art Gallery! We are open 10am-2pm on Saturday Feb 13th - drop by and pick up a take-home activity kit featuring two fun crafts*. *While supplies last!

BV Museum Curator Kira is joining the Royal BC Museum for an RBCM@Home (Kids) session tomorrow at 11am! Visit https://royalbcmuseum.bc.ca//rbcmhome-kids-railroad-lanter for the Zoom link, or check out the live stream on the RBCM Facebook page linked above. All aboard!

We're celebrating Family Day with the Smithers Art Gallery by offering FREE take-home activity kits for kids, featuring art and natural history crafts! Kits will be available starting February 12th. Made possible by support from the Province of BC through the BC Museums Association.

Grade 5 student Connor recently visited the museum with his mum and siblings, and was very interested in our exhibit about the world's first "Broken Arrow", the American B-36 bomber that crashed on Mount Kologet in 1950. Connor shared with us the essay that he wrote about the plane and the crash - we think he did a pretty amazing job! A future historian in the making? #bchistory #northernbc

2020 marks the 100th anniversary of construction for the first Driftwood schoolhouse. Tony L'Orsa has shared a history of the school, now available on the Museum's blog. Thank you Tony! Check out the post at: https://bvmuseum.org/driftwood-school

The Museum will be closed on Wednesday November 11th, reopening for regular hours on Thursday. We invite you to join us to watch the live stream of Smithers' Remembrance Day ceremonies on the Smithers Interior News Facebook page. Included in this post is a selection from a May 10th 1945 Interior News article about how Smithers marked the end of the war in Europe.

This year Veteran's Week and Remembrance Day in Canada are focusing on the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. This article, written by local historian Harry Kruisselbrink and published on the Museum's blog this spring shares the story of the liberation of Holland in 1945, and a Smithers man who was there. Visit https://bvmuseum.org/dave-havard-story/ to read about David Havard's Second World War experiences.

A little bit of fun (and educational) Halloween reading: why are clowns so scary? This article from Smithsonian Magazine delves into the history. https://www.smithsonianmag.com//the-history-and-psycholog/

Today is a "National Chocolate Day" in the US and Canada! In the museum's collection is a can that once contained Neilson's Jersey Cocoa powder. Neilson's is a Canadian brand that was founded by William Neilson in 1893, and originally produced milk products and ice cream, later branching into chocolate. Under William's son Morden, Neilson's became the largest producer of chocolate products in Canada between 1915 and 1947. The company was sold to George Weston Limited in 1947, and later taken over by Saputo corporate group in 2008. Now that you've read this post, go get yourself some chocolate!