By Sue Morhun

It’s been a banner year for the Oliver and District Heritage Society and one of the highlights of its annual meeting last week was announcement of a $78,000 project grant supporting the creation of a new permanent museum exhibit titled “Deep Roots.”

Funding, provided by the Canada 150 Heritage Program, complements a previously announced $60,000 allocation from the BC Rural Dividend Fund which will enable a major upgrade to the museum yard creating a native Heritage Garden in the process. Design work on both undertakings is already underway with a completion date for the spring of 2018.

Total cost of the two projects is $180,750 with the difference made up through staff and volunteer time.   

“Wow, overwhelming!” was the delighted reaction of the capacity crowd gathered at the Quail’s Nest to hear popular KVR historian Joe Smuin give  a much enjoyed  pictorial history of the spur line that linked Penticton with Oliver and Osoyoos.   In fact, the Society had more good financial news to share.

Over the past 12 months the Society has received a total of $268,300 in grants while its volunteers have contributed in excess of 2,100 hours attending to various tasks, a value approaching $54,000. It’s remarkable!

Securing grant funding has made a dramatic difference to everything from re-roofing the museum, improving collection conservation and storage to documentation and access to both the artifact and archival collections.

It’s unprecedented receiving this amount of money. We have been wildly successful and now, thanks to that outside support, we are poised to improve even more.

The “Deep Roots” exhibit project will encompass the history of Oliver and surrounding area according to Executive Director Manda Maggs, and enable the Society to build brand new exhibit display cases, upgrade lighting, prepare high quality interpretive signage and create interactive components.

The Heritage Garden project will include interpreted plantings of native vegetation, improving access and signage for yard exhibits and creating an outdoor programming space.

The business position of the meeting saw directors Bruce Hamilton, Dave Mattes and Sue Morhun returned to serve another two years. They were joined by three newly elected directors: Cindy Pinske, Terry Killough and Tim Riley.

The directors thanked outgoing treasurer and retiring director Linda Gergely for her past work and dedication to Oliver’s heritage.