Fort St. John North Peace Museum
9323 - 100th Street V1J 4N4 Fort Saint John, BC, Canada

New in the museum gift shop: animal themed magnetic note pads and sticky notes. These make great gifts or stocking stuffers for animal lovers, outdoor enthusiasts, and anyone who enjoys a good laugh. Proceeds support the operation of the Fort St. John North Peace Museum including our educational posts on Facebook!

Looking for a great gift idea or maybe some new decor for your house? Look no further! These lovely canvas prints are perfect for fall/winter. They also happen to be 50% off! Yes these can be yours for only $14.99 plus tax. All proceeds support the museum. Don't forget that all our books are 10% off through Saturday Nov. 21, 2020!

We are so excited about this project! We welcome anyone who would like to volunteer to help us with scanning our newspaper collection. Set your own hours - as little as half an hour a month or whatever you can contribute.

Trivia Thursday #423: What is this intriguing object in our collection?

Do you recognize these signs? They hung outside the Alaska Highway News Office on 98 Street for decades. They came down earlier this year during renovations and were donated to the museum in August. AHN Editor Matt Preprost says these signs were made around 1965. We have a photograph of a different set of signs c. 1969 so this estimate of 1965 may be a bit later. ... The metalwork shop in the North Peace High School built these signs. You can see the students practicing their newly acquired skills as they made the letters and built the signs. The signs have weathered the elements quite well over the years with only a bit of rust, most notably at the top of the letters where snow probably settled. Do you remember these signs? Does anyone have better knowledge of when they were installed? Does anyone remember there ever being a NEWS part of this set of signs?

For the month of December, our #MuseumMomentofZen posts will feature the Christmas poetry of Vernice McIvor. Almost every year beginning in 1960, one of Vernice's poems was featured in the Christmas edition of the Alaska Highway News. The poem we are starting with is very poignant given the loss many families have faced this year. #MuseumMomentofZen

Northeastern BC Museums working together as the Northern Trails Heritage Society launched this website. Check out our contributions and add your own!

We have got a good amount of snow in the last three weeks and it keeps on coming! It’s cause for celebration around my house (at least for my toddler) with a large snow slide/toboggan run in the backyard and trips on a toboggan through Fish Creek Community Forest. All the shovelling may not feel Zen, but there’s still an enchanting quality to snowflakes swirling down. I was trying to find a photograph to capture the magic of snow gently falling on trees, which it was doing... while we walked through the forest on Sunday. The only great snowflake photos currently in our collection are ones that Duncan Cran took of a late snowfall in May and that was not the time of year I was aiming for in this post! During my search, I stumbled upon this negative of the Peace River valley in winter c. 1942. Laddie Ponich was the photographer. He grew up on the Canadian Prairies and made his way west. He came to the Peace region for a few years around 1942 and took a series of photographs including some for the U.S. Army building the Alaska Highway. I like the way he set up this shot with the evergreen tree on the bank on the left and another evergreen overhanging the river along the top of the photograph. It makes a perfect frame for this wintery scene. I also love how it captures the snowy hills in the background. No matter the season, the beauty of these hills always put me in awe. #MuseumMomentofZen

Trivia Thursday #424: What business is decked out for the holidays (c. late 1960s) in this photograph?

Thursday Trivia #421: What Fort St. John store is this? (Bonus: Why is there a crowd in front of the store?) Photo has been digitally altered for the purpose of this question.

Need a Fort St. John or Canada Christmas ornament? We've got you covered. Deck the tree and support your local museum!

I love paintings of a cozy cabin tucked into a snowy scene (there are at least three in our collection) and this beautiful watercolour by Connie Shortt is no exception. We actually have very few watercolours in our collection and this medium lends itself so well to a winter sunset (or sunrise) scene with blending colours. I may not live in such an idyllic mountain/lake setting, but I do love being warm in my house after a big snowfall. It’s fabulous when snow falls overnight... on a weekend and my family can hibernate inside on a Saturday morning without needing to clean off the cars and head out to work and our busy lives. The snow makes everything fresh and buries our homes, streets, and cars in a cozy blanket. The dirt and dust of our daily lives is covered in a sparkling white mantle. When you don’t have to rush out, the snow gives you an excuse to snuggle down and focus on yourself or your family. It’s the perfect time to read a book, have a conversation over a hot beverage, and enjoy the beauty of a winter wonderland. What are your thoughts on this painting? #MuseumMomentofZen See more

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Even Covid Santa has to adapt to new pandemic regulations! Northern Trails Heritage Society’s life sized Jolly Old St. Nicholas will still be appearing at the Fort St. John North Peace Museum this Saturday (November 28) from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Given the recently updated health guidelines, we will ask each family group to pre-register for a ten minute timeslot by calling the museum at 250-787-0430. When a pre-registered family arrives, we ask that everyone sc...hool-aged and older wear a mask until they reach Santa’s bench for photos (and then mask again following photographs). The family can then pose for photos with Santa outside in front of our beautiful snow covered historic buildings. Someone in the family group must take the photographs with their own device. After posing for photographs, we ask that you pick up postcards to Santa fill out at home (they can be posted at no charge in any mailbox) and head back to your vehicle to make way for the next family. Unfortunately given the current guidelines, this is the only way this activity can go ahead. See more

We have many different types of skis in our collection, but up until now they have all been made of wood. This is our first pair of fibreglass downhill skis. In fact the Toni Sailer ski was the first all-fibreglass ski in Canada. It was manufactured beginning in 1959 (though this pair dates from the 1960s). The ski was named after Toni Sailer, the Austrian downhill skier who won three gold at the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina, Italy. Art Molnar and Fred Langendorf invente...d these skis. G.M. Plastics in Granby, Quebec manufactured them. Lorne McBeth purchased this pair of skis from the sports store in Dawson Creek about 1964 and used them for about five years. His name and Fort St. John BC are printed on them in gold letters. Lorne used these skis at the Wuthrich hill. At 210 cm, they were long skis, which made them hard to turn. Now downhill skis are much shorter. Lorne skied until the late 1990s. He donated these skis to the museum in 2020.