Paul Bickford
Northern News Services
Monday, July 23, 2007

HAY RIVER - If not for the Hay River Museum Society, many remnants of the town's past would be long gone.

Some of it would even have ended up in the dump.

Peter Osted, co-chair of the Hay River Museum Society, stands outside the Hay River Heritage Centre. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

Co-chair Peter Osted has been involved in the society since it was formed 30 years ago.

Osted, a 66-year-old retired teacher, is dedicated to the preservation of community history.

Through that commitment the museum society developed the Hay River Heritage Centre.

It is housed in an old Hudson's Bay Company building from the 1940s. The store closed in 1968 and the building was used by Northern Transportation Company Ltd. (NTCL) for dry goods storage until purchased by the museum society for $1 in 1999.

The centre is open for residents and tourists from early-June to mid-September each year.

Visitors can find sometimes surprising items at the centre, such as 12 books published in a Braille-like form of South Slavey syllabics.

The books were printed in England by the CNIB, and belonged to the late Sarah Sibbeston, who was visually impaired. They were donated to the heritage centre by her family after she passed away.

Osted noted the books - which feature The Psalms and other Bible stories - are unique and the Hay River Heritage Centre has the only ones in the world.

NEWS/NORTH: Where do the historic items come from?

Peter Osted: They are donated.... There are very few things that are on loan. And a lot of it is found items. You wouldn't believe what stuff was on the way to the dump.

N/N: What has been found headed to the dump?

P.O.: There's a beautiful oil barrel. It's so old that it's riveted. It's not welded together. It was on its way to the dump. There are old freight weigh scales. They were on their way to the dump. I'm trying to rebuild an old dolly. It was at the dump. There are two heaters, one for an airplane and one for a truck. They were on their way to the dump.... During clean-up week, I actually drive around and check.

N/N: Do you find anything?

P.O.: Occasionally there's stuff. This year, there was a pump organ, which is going to be restored and it's going to end up here most likely.... The tag inside says 1895. The warranty tag was still in it.

N/N: Would you want people, before they take any old stuff to the dump, to give you a call?

P.O.: I'd like people to bring stuff in. I can't say no, because then it dries up. I'd love to take a look. Sometimes it's worthwhile.

N/N: What is the goal of the Hay River Heritage Centre?

P.O.: We want to preserve what's left of the physical history of Hay River. That is the bits and pieces, the objects, the stuff. We want to save some of that. We would like to use that to recreate the story of the town and make it available for citizens, school kids and visitors to see where this place comes from and its background.

N/N: How important are museums to communities?

P.O.: A community needs to know where it came from. Unless you have lots of grandparents around to tell the stories, a museum is the next best thing. In a young community like this, there are very few grandparents or great-grandparents. The oral tradition doesn't exist as such anymore. So a museum is the only other way of retelling some of that background story.

N/N.: Do you think members of the general public recognize the importance of museums?

P.O.: Not really. There are some. Not everybody, not by a long shot. There are a few. I don't know what percentage. I know people who say they have no interest in their family backgrounds and no interest in where they came from. They don't care. They're just interested in today and tomorrow. There are others of us who think that it's kind of neat to know what has shaped the physical environment around us and ourselves.

N/N: Is it a struggle for small, local museums to survive?

P.O.: It is. It's a lot of volunteer work. In a busy community, like all of the communities in the North, nobody has any spare time left over. Everybody is busy, either working for themselves, or a company or whatever. And with young families, the volunteer basis has been shrinking. Young people are too busy.

N/N: Do you think the territorial government or the federal government should take a more active role in the development of community museums like the Hay River Heritage Centre?

P.O.: I certainly think all three levels of government should, including the municipal level. For a town like Hay River, this is an attraction. It would be nice to be supported for that attraction. There's no way we can run it like a business. We have to be subsidized somehow.... If we were subsidized to $15,000, we could run this place. Not heating it for the wintertime, but we'd be well off.

N/N: What would that $15,000 in guaranteed funding from whatever level of government get that you don't have right now?

P.O.: We spend a lot of time approaching various levels of government and various departments begging, cajoling and finagling for any kind of support. If we were freed away from that, we could spend more time creating the displays and writing the stories. But we spend so much time on fundraising.

N/N: Why isn't the heritage centre called a museum?

P.O.: We've had some discussion about that inside the group. Most people call it a museum.

I call it a museum. Heritage centre is used because of the definition of a museum. A museum includes archives, preservation, and many more levels. We can't come up to that level - climate control, humidity control, all-season heating and curators.