ROB MURRAY: I’m speaking with Ron Ulrich, Executive Officer with the Canmore Museum. This month marks the 42nd  anniversary of the closure of the Canmore Mines back in 1979. This is also the month you’re launching a brand new initiative called Museum@Home, and you’re doing this with a tribute to the late great Gerry Stephenson. What can you tell us about the virtual mind tour and the history of his life you’ve posted?

RON ULRICH: Gerry was such an instrumental part of Canmore’s mining heritage. When you think about the mine tour that he used to do for the museum, we had over a thousand people participate in the tour. I didn’t have a chance to get to know him. He passed away in 2019. I had heard so much about him and the tours, and it was such a loss to me to learn that history through his lens. So when I learned from Glen Crawford that he had recorded this, I thought we had to bring this to the website and develop something around this. There are actually two series, one was his mine tour, the other one was a program called Stories of my Life. We’re hoping to have other people in the community be able to come forward and do a similar life narrative. It’s a great tribute to Gerry and a great opportunity to continue what he was so very passionate about. That was both the history of the Canmore Mines, but he comes from such a rich life. We were really grateful that when had the foresight to record all of that before Gerry passed away.

RM: I definitely got a taste of some of Gerry’s stories when I had him on air with me a few times before his passing. It was one of those things – this summer I’ll do that mine tour. No, I ran out of time, I’ll do it next summer, and it just never happened. I’m definitely sad that I wasn’t able to do it with him in person. Does it still hold up as part of a video?

RU: Yes. With all of these programs that are live, there’s the personal connection we make with people. It’s part of that whole experience, but the video series really does convey his love of storytelling, and certainly the information that he was keen to be able to share.

RM: This is part of the Canmore Museum@home members-only digital streaming service. What are your future plans for this service?

RU: Museum@home is a digital streaming service that allows us to bring films that we produce as well as a platform for local filmmakers to be able to share their stories. Our membership fees are really low – $25 a year for an individual and $45 for a family. There’s a number of other sites that we’re creating and looking to create as part of our larger storytelling platform. We’re developing a new site called Stories That Matter, free for the public to access and also a place where people in our community can share their stories. It doesn’t always have to be an eight episode series, it can be my story in writing. An opportunity for the community to contribute their stories so that they are passed down from generation to generation. They’re hosted on a web platform, but they’re also become part of our archives along with the photos that are submitted. We’re going to be launching down the road a similar site called Places That Matter, which also highlights the story of some of those historical places that are important to the community so people can contribute their memories. The community is undergoing a lot of changes and continues to grow and evolve as communities do, but I think it’s important also to remember our shared history. Being able to record how we all see our community, and our experience in Canmore and the Bow Valley, enriches our sense of place. I think it enriches our identity as a community. I think it is really important for us to be able to recognize that we are stewards of this place and that there were people before us. We have 10,000 years of human experience here in the Valley. What’s the next 10,000 years, or a hundred years, going to be like? How does the past inform our present? How does our present inform our future? I think these different platforms that we’re creating really bring that to life.

 

Filed under: Canmore, Canmore Museum