What an amazing summer season it has been at the Kaatza Station Museum. After a busy Heritage Days and Lake Days, the pace has been hectic.
We hired a summer student, Jack Siemens from Youbou, through the Canada Summer Jobs program. By hiring a student we are able to stay open seven days a week during our busy season.
Our volunteers continue working throughout the summer.
We have built a new handicap ramp at the Bell Tower School, repainted several of our large outdoor artifacts, repaired the caboose, had a spar tree installed and are making room for a Cummins diesel that has been donated and cosmetically restored. There is no end to projects to keep three old buildings in working order.
Other volunteers have been busy helping to catalogue items for our archives. They organize the files, cut out newspaper articles, file photographs, etc.
This summer we moved a lot of the archival material to a new storage area. We are also working on several new displays for next year.
Since the beginning of June we have had just over 1,700 visitors. Most of them are from Vancouver Island and the lower mainland, some from the U.S. and many from Britain, Switzerland and Germany. They’ve come from as far away as Australia, Sri Lanka, Hungary and Israel.
We’ve had problems with vandalism this summer. The caboose was spray painted, someone tried to break into the Plymouth diesel engine and several outdoor artifacts, waiting to be restored, were stolen.
We held a movie night in June and because it was so successful, we plan on doing it again next summer.
We have had many researchers here. People doing theses for school, family history, background for books, etc.
We have prepared a new brochure and are putting together a booklet of photos and information. This is the first of a series that we plan to publish and will feature information about Cowichan Lake 100 years ago.
The museum is operating on winter hours now – 10 a.m.–4 p.m., Monday through Thursday. Stop in and see us and if you want to volunteer that can easily be arranged.
Our first meeting of the season will be on Tuesday, Sept. 18, at 7 p.m. at the Bell Tower School. Everyone is welcome.
- Barb Simpson, Curator’s report