Paul Bickford
Northern News Services
Published Monday, January 14, 2008

HAY RIVER - While most people find one job more than enough, Laurie Young has three.

Young is full-time manager of Fort Smith's Northern Life Museum, part-time executive director of The Artists of the South Slave Society (TASSS) and owner/operator of a home-based framing business.

Laurie Young is, among other things, manager of Fort Smith's Northern Life Museum. - Paul Bickford/NNSL photo

"I'm a workaholic, I always have been," she said, while sitting in her office at the museum.

She explained her many roles require late nights and a skill at balancing things, including family time with her husband.

"When you really believe in what you're doing, it's not a hardship," she said.

Young returned to the museum in November, after serving as manager from 2004 to 2006.

"I love the museum, and the manager's position came open again," she said.

She said she had been doing bookkeeping for the museum and it was easy to step in as the manager.

"I'm a paperwork type of person," she said.

Young also occasionally helps prepare exhibits.

"I painted some of the backdrops," she said, adding she helped set up the exhibit of a 1950s kitchen.

"You've got to be a jack of all trades here," she said, adding with a laugh, "I fixed the vacuum cleaner."

Only Young and a curator work full-time at the museum.

She said the museum offers a great working environment. "I love the collection."

Young also said she enjoys spending time with the public and finds it exciting to show people what the museum has to offer.

Young said one of the museum's goals this year is to develop an Aboriginal cultural centre.

It will be created with the advice of the community, she said. "We're going to rely heavily on their input on what they want to see in there."

The area will be used for such things as arts and crafts, elders' storytelling and other cultural activities, and may eventually contain a log building.

Young said it is hoped most of the Aboriginal cultural centre will be complete by the end of the summer.

It is estimated the museum has between 13,000 to 15,000 artifacts, in all.

"It's a very important collection and it's important to the North," Young said, adding much of it was gathered by the Oblates from various parts of the NWT.

With TASSS, Young and the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment are working on a plan to revamp historic St. Isidore's Church at Mission Park.

The idea is to use the building, which was erected in 1923, as a year-round, multi-use facility for the arts, including an office for TASSS and workshop and gallery space.

"It's an excellent opportunity for the arts society," Young said, adding TASSS would manage the facility, which would boost tourism to Mission Park.

The society is applying for federal funding for the project and should have an answer by April.

The building requires insulation, new windows and a heating system, Young said. "It's a major renovation."

Currently, TASSS operates out of a small office donated by Aurora College in the Mount Aven building.

Young also runs her own picture framing and crafts home-based business, which takes up most of her evenings and weekends. Kazoodles Crafts and Framing began about a year and a half ago.

"It's way busier than I thought it was going to be," Young said.

She does decorative painting on plates and wooden and tin objects.

Originally from Saskatchewan, the 45-year-old mother of a grown son has lived in the various NWT communities since the mid-1980s.

In 1991, Young came to Fort Smith, which she described as her favourite place in the NWT. "I really enjoy it here."