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Restoring treasures at the Highwood Museum

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On June 21st, after the floodwaters started to recede in the Town of High River, I was able to get inside the downtown area for a short while.

cal1230 lha36 Restoring treasures at the Highwood Museum

I remember looking at the water surrounding the Highwood Museum, the vehicles abandoned in the street, the trash piled up on the railway tracks behind it.

But I wasn’t too worried because I knew the museum no longer stored all their treasures in the basement of the building.

What I didn’t know then was that they had moved the collection a block west into the basement of the Memorial Centre, where the water was possibly deeper.

cal1230 lha24 Restoring treasures at the Highwood Museum

It seems incomprehensible that a collection of artifacts representing the history of a town would survive a fire in 2010 just to be ruined in a flood in 2013.

At first it was thought that 80 per cent of the collection would have to be thrown away.

So I wasn’t hopeful that my great-grandmother’s wedding dress, also part of the collection, had survived.

In 2010, when I learned of the fire, I was upset that I had never taken the time to visit the museum to see Mary Jane “Jennie” (Noble) Cowling’s 1905 wedding dress.

CAL0115-lha3.jpg

She came to High River in 1912 with her husband and three small sons and she was expecting a fourth, my grandfather.

Following the flood, when people were finally allowed back into town, I went down into the basement of the Memorial Centre; There was a thick layer of mud everywhere and marks on the walls from where the water must have almost reached the ceiling. I saw pianos that were lifted up by flood waters and then set back down on piles of other artifacts.

It seems incredible, but so far the news is good. Guy Weadicks hat is intact; Florence LaDue’s boots and my great-grandmother’s dress were among the first things to be returned to a new storage site after being cleaned.

Florence LaDue, Guy Weadick's wife, boots have returned to High River seven months after the Highwood River flooded.

Florence LaDue, Guy Weadick’s wife, boots have returned to High River seven months after the Highwood River flooded.

Now the dress isn’t the same shade it use to be, but considering what it has been through it was a sight to be seen.

As the collection is restored, the museum will need volunteers to help catalogue it again. They are also starting a fundraising campaign to raise money to find a permanent, and hopefully, much safer place to store everything.

To help out please call the museum at 403 6527156.

lhjalte@calgaryherald.com

on twitter @LorraineHjalte

Life isn’t quite the same in High River following the flood. This blog is my way of searching the town to find out what the new ‘normal’ is like.



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