By Maureen Parriott

Special to the Times-Chronicle

Remember what happened the last time you moved house?

You had to search for ages for the right place. It needed renovation. You set a timeline. Made lists. Got boxes. Got more boxes. Packed boxes. Labeled boxes. Were extra careful with delicate heirlooms like Aunt Gertrude’s crystal and Great-Grandmother’s wedding dress. There were unexpected glitches. Frustrating delays. You scrapped the timeline and set another one. And another. Started the countdown. Organized friends. Another glitch. And suddenly, when you almost believed it would never happen, the big day arrived. 

Now imagine your old house is enormous and crammed with fragile heirlooms. They fill up the attic and the basement and a space the size of a curling rink. But none of those thousands of heirlooms belong to you. They belong to hundreds of people who have entrusted their irreplaceable memorabilia to you for safekeeping. The trouble is, the house is falling apart and you’re worried that you can’t keep them safe, which is why you have to move. 

Welcome to the Osoyoos Museum and Archives. 

Almost a decade ago, Museum board president Mat Hassen approached Town council to describe how the aged quonset that had once been the community curling rink was actually endangering the artifacts it was supposed to protect. With no way to heat or cool it, sneaky leaks, and the odd bat dropping in, the risk of damage to Osoyoos’s history had become critical. The council listened.

Following a 2011 referendum approving funds for a new facility, community fundraising, grant applications, an agreement with the Home Building Centre to vacate their building and move to the airport, and delays. Timelines had to be moved back. Years passed. 

Hassen, abetted by determined board members and the volunteers who have always been the backbone of the Museum, dug in for the duration. One by one, the challenges were met and defeated. 

The Museum finally took possession of the building on January 1, 2020. Work started on January 2. Volunteers and contractors have been labouring side-by-side to transform it ever since. 

“They took it right down to the bare walls and floors,”  Executive Director Kara Burton said last week. “They had to move and re-do the doors and even the stairs.”

Bathrooms, a kitchen, a second floor office overlooking the main floor, and an elevator are now installed, making the interior look totally different from the familiar building centre. Flexible display areas are designed to allow for a changing array of small exhibits so visitors can see more of the collections. The basement will be used for storage for now, but in the future, it will hold exhibits as well. The front door is redesigned, set at a jaunty angle, and the sidewalk is being reconfigured to meet it.

All the while things were on hold, Burton and Collections Manager Celeste Pio were busy boxing up the Museum’s collections and entering their identifying information into their ever-expanding database. Most dresses, uniforms, and fragile glassware have now been documented and packed. 

Burton said the public may not realize that only a small percentage of any museum’s artifacts is on display at one time, so there is much more material to be accounted for than meets the eye. The thoroughness of museum record-keeping goes magnitudes beyond what most people realize.

 “If you come in here and say your grandmother donated a thimble in 1952, we can find it,” Burton laughed.

Because Burton and Pio are both Osoyoos natives – Burton’s father was the postmaster and her mother the community librarian for many years, and Pio’s roots are three generations deep – their personal knowledge of the donors often adds important information to the database.   

A break-in at the new building a few months ago deprived the work crew of tools and could have caused another delay, but community members jumped in to donate replacements, and work resumed almost immediately. The workers were likewise undaunted by the advent of COVID. They simply donned masks, distanced, and kept on going.  

Burton estimates that at least 20 volunteers have been involved in the renovation, with at least a dozen in attendance each day.

As a result of this all-out effort, Burton said that mid-September is their projected move-in date. They are not dissuaded by the temporary halt in the elevator installation.

With its can-do spirit, the Museum hopes to throw open its new doors next spring, and will deal with whatever the COVID situation requires when the time comes.