What’s in an old photograph?
For the Morden History & Archives group, a picture helps preserve history.
For those who remember the faces, buildings, and objects that make up the photograph's subjects, the memento is reminiscent of a bygone time.
Maurice Butler, a long-time resident of Morden who has seen eras pass, describes looking at an old photo as “the best sort of feeling.”
A project to preserve history
These two lenses of a picture's value were recently combined at Homestead South, a senior assisted living complex in Morden.
The Morden History & Archives group enlisted the help of the home’s residents for its current project.
“We are sort of focusing right now on establishing the archive and looking for a permanent home, but in the meantime, at least cataloguing all of the data that we have,” says Lenore Laverty, who works with the group.
“It's been sitting in the library for a number of years, so our goal with all of this is to digitize it.”
Laverty says that another member of the group, Darryl Toews, has already begun digitizing old newspapers, some from as early as the 1800s.
Help identifying Mordenites from the past
As Morden History & Archives continues its project, it is also planning to digitize photos and documents so that community members can search through them online for history or family lineage purposes.
Before this happens, however, the group required some help determining information about the photos.
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That’s where the residents of Homestead South stepped in.
“It just seemed to me, [since] you've got a collection of people with lots of history in the community here, that maybe this would be interesting for them and helpful to us to identify some of the pictures,” says Laverty.
The May 21st meeting to peruse the photos was the second of its kind.
Maurice Butler, who moved to Morden in 1978 and is remembered for his long career of volunteerism in the area, was one of the residents of Homestead South who offered expertise to shed some light on the photos.
For him, it was rewarding.
“Every time you revisit old photos, it’s the best sort of feeling,” he says. “A lot of lovely memories come back about certain people.”
Butler adds that when he recognizes someone in a photo, the reaction is immediate.
For him, seeing figures from the past as they were when he first arrived in Morden is an experience.
Where did the photographs come from?
The photographs that Butler looked over took quite a journey to reach his eyes.
Laverty says the Morden History & Archive group acquired the collection after it landed at the Canadian Fossil Discovery Centre.
“They let some of this stuff go, and so that's how we've got it,” she says. “Then, in the meantime, other people have left us pictures. We're happy to have them as a record of the community and the people who lived here.”
Laverty says the Morden History & Archive group has been active, in some capacity, since 2007, a year that marked the 125th anniversary of Morden.
She says the project “fizzled” for a while, but now, it’s flourishing thanks to several new resources, including a few professional archivists who moved to Morden.
It's likely that community interest and the experiences of those at Homestead South also help.
With files from Connie Bailey
