CITY OF EDMONTON HERITAGE COLLECTION
2020 REPORT

A common theme this year is the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on the number of donation/reference queries, accessions, and ability to participate in community engagement projects.

        DONATION/REFERENCE QUERIES

        Number of Queries (January 1 to December 31, 2020):  

                 Artifacts Donation:  77                                         Archives Donations:     29                          

                 Curatorial Reference:  6                                        Archives In-Person Reference Visits:   516                  

                 Artifact Loan(s): 3                                                  Archives Virtual Reference requests:  2996

        ACCESSIONS

               Number of Accessions (January 1 to December 31, 2020):  

             Artifact Centre:   14

             Archives Corporate Records Transfers:  4 (46.5m) from Corp Records Centre;

                                                                  5 direct from departments

        CATALOGUING

                 Number of Artifacts Catalogued (January 1 to December 31, 2020):  

        Artifacts Catalogued: 4900          Reproductions Catalogued: 1630                Total: 6530

   Fort Edmonton Park Buildings Catalogued

        The following buildings at Fort Edmonton Park have been completely re-catalogued this year:

• Inside Palisades of Fort - Meat House; Rundle Chapel; Cooper; Carpentry Shop; Ice House

                        Married Men’s 1/Blacksmith Shop; Married Men’s 2; Married Men’s 3; Married Men’s 4;

Fort - Married Men’s 5; and outside the Palisades, the  Fort Trade Store

• 1885 Street - Bulletin Building; Byrne’s Shoe Shop; NWMP Outpost; Ottewell House; Dominion Land Office; McDonald Carpentry Shop; Kelly’s Saloon; Secord Warehouse; Sanderson & Looby (Blacksmith shop); 25% Daly’s Drugstore/Doctor Wilson’s Office; 25 % McCauley’s Livery Stable
• 1905 Street - St. Michael’s Church; 75% Rutherford House; 50 % Firkins House
• 1920 Street - Poole Construction Shed; 75% Sun Drug Store

     Archival fonds added to Catalogue (January 1 to December 31, 2020)

• RG-18 City of Edmonton Finance Department fonds,
• RG-101 Series 3 Town of Jasper Place,
• RG-200 Archives Research Collection various series

                                (aerial photographs, fire insurance maps, oral history interviews and maps)

• MS-152 - Reg Turner fonds (artwork)
• MS-690 - Macdonald, Clifton Family fonds (theatre)
• MS-36 -  John A.L. McDougall Family fonds (business)
• MS-253 - Mary Capling Hyde fonds (family life)
• MS-1192 - Byron, May Family fonds (photography studio)

CURATORIAL RESEARCH AND PROJECTS

        Research:

• Daly’s Drug Store/Doctor Wilson’s Office
• Peter Erasmus House
• 1920s product packaging
•  Fur Trade material goods, trading practices, packaging and protocol
• Benefits to community engagement strategies
• Research and shared photograph from Danard Collection Records with Drayton Valley Museum

        Development:

• Artifact Centre Website pages created and submitted for approval  
• Grade 5/6 artifact inquiry kit prototype and trial run in classroom
• Further work on Fur Trade artifact inquiry kit

        Projects:

• Over seventeen hundred 1920s drug store reproductions built
• More than 100 fur trade store reproductions built
• Coordinated deaccession and transfer to another museum of three Carriages, Stagecoach and four motor vehicles from FEP site, as well as fire truck and two tractors from Artifacts Centre/O’Keefe Yard

ARCHIVAL RESEARCH AND PROJECTS

Archivists provided access to thousands of documents for researchers on many topics including the         following:

• Research and photographs for CBC’s Our Edmonton series on parks and naming.
• Photographs and plaque texts for the City's redevelopment at Butler Memorial Park in Jasper Place.

        Projects

• Started podcast (23 episodes) of digitized oral histories from the Archives research collection
• Over 10,000 aerial photographs, and 500 fire insurance maps digitized

ENGAGEMENT

• John Walter Museum Social Media Posts
• John Walter Museum Accessibility project
• Heather Kerr and Kathryn Ivany presented a Virtual Field Session: Walterdale for Hindsight 2020: The Association for Preservation Technology International (APT)-The National Trust Joint Conference (October 1-7, 2020)

• Photograph of artifact mascot bear from 1978 Edmonton Commonwealth Games shared with Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games committee for use in the social media campaign mascot competition. Posted on Birmingham 2022 FaceBook account July 20, 2020.
• A brick from the Anderson brickyard c. 1899-1910 (1965.132.8) was loaned to Edmonton Park Adventures for use in an educational historical film, as part of a series of such films to support Edmonton K-6 public school curriculum. This particular film section was on Peter Anderson’s brickyard in the Gallagher flats. We also shared photos and information about  the personal artifacts of P. Anderson’s in the collection (bearskin busby hat and it's metal case (1962-47-1 & 2), and his compass and its leather case (1964-170-1A&B) that he used to guide his escape from a POW camp in Germany)  which they use to illustrate and enliven the subject for children.

• ECAMPing Trip (Edmonton Heritage Council): Edmonton’s Identities -- The History of a City in Search of Itself (October 1, 2020) guest video spot featuring magistrate’s chair belonging to Emily Murphy.