Madeline Baker, Times Chronicle
Since January 2020, the Osoyoos and District Museum and Archives Society have been hard at work creating a new home from the skeleton of what was once a hardware store. Two years later, society president Martha Collins is equally excited about what they have achieved and what is yet to come.
The project has taken “hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours,” according to Collins, who spoke to Osoyoos Town Council at a recent committee of the whole meeting about their progress. “It truly is a community initiative,” she said, expressing their strong gratitude for the support they have received.
For example, Collins shared that the society received over $200,000 in donations from local businesses and individuals during the global pandemic restrictions of 2020 and 2021, many of which had devastating effects on small businesses and also impacted the society’s ability to hold vital fundraising events.
This support was reciprocal, as Collins and project manager Larry Stone were able to ensure that 90 per cent of subcontractors hired to work on the new museum and archives were local businesses. Given that over $1 million has been invested in the building to date, their efforts represent a sizable contribution back to the local economy.
Phase one of the project, which included the main museum floor and mezzanine, was previously completed in December of 2020. This year has seen work begin on phase two, encompassing the multi-purpose room, archive and artifacts, and washrooms, and Collins said that “progress has been steady” since January.
Check out this shiny new museum building in Osoyoos.
Kara Burton, executive director and curator of the museum society, was also present to detail the numerous updates that were needed to transform the old Home Hardware Building Centre and made their project so time-consuming and work-intensive from the start.
“We completely gutted the building right down to the concrete walls,” said Burton. “There’s new plumbing and electrical. The mezzanines that were in there weren’t up to code so we had to build a new mezzanine for our office space. The stairway wasn’t up to code, so we cut in through the concrete floor and put in a new, wider stairwell. When you walk in, everything you see is new.”
The contents of the old museum also had to be moved into the new space, which Burton described as “quite a task” because “no one has written a book about how to move a museum.” She estimated that, with the help of many local volunteers, they have moved 85 per cent of artifacts into the new building to date and hope to have the rest moved by September.
More recently, signage displaying the new museum logo has been added to the building’s store front, and plans are in place to have four archival photos of the Osoyoos area rendered as murals on the outside walls. Also, the museum has already hosted students from UBC on an experiential field study course they plan to offer again next year in the completed facility.
This new building will greatly expand their ability to host exhibits and courses at all levels of education, according to Burton, as “environmental concerns” around the old building limited their scope. The society has already planned a future exhibit in conjunction with the Okanagan Basin Water Board and Kelowna Museum that’s scheduled for the fall.
Collins expressed her gratitude to town council for their continued support, without which she said the new museum would have been an impossibility. “When it is time [for] our grand opening,” she said, “we hope that all of you plan to attend so we can all raise a glass together and celebrate our new museum.”
Osoyoos’s Museum Society has been in charge of the upkeep and management of the museum since 1963, when it was formed with a mandate of “collecting, protecting, preserving, and providing access to artifacts and information regarding the history of the Osoyoos area.”
The Museum and Archives Society will be present at the Canada Day parade and celebrations, and they will be open to the public on July 2 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
