The Bruce County Museum and Cultural Centre. (Bruce County Museum Twitter photo)
The Bruce County Museum & Cultural Centre will be celebrating Archives Awareness Week.
Archive Awareness Week runs the week of April 3rd, and two speakers will be making presentations about different cultures in the region.
Archivist Deb Sturdevant says that they’ll be welcoming the speakers on Wednesday, April 5th between 2 and 4 pm.
Researcher May Ip, who is the Founder of the Grey Bruce Chinese Heritage and Cultural Association, has delved into when Chinese immigrants first arrived in Grey and Bruce Counties, dating back to a quick line in the Paisley Advocate from May 9, 1889.
Sturdevant says that what started as a sentence in a newspaper turned into Chinese businesses being established and thriving in the community, such as a number of Chinese laundries that popped up in Chesley, Lucknow, Paisley, Teeswater, and Walkerton.
The second speaker is Jenna McGuire, who is the executive director of the Historic Saugeen Metis.
She will give a presentation about sorting through local archives while researching the Indigenous and Metis community.
McGuire has experience with the Bruce County Archives, as well as other archives in Ontario to dig into some of the county’s history, including being a part of the fur trade.
Sturdevant says that they’re also always welcoming donations to the archive so that they are more fulsome and inclusive.
“We definitely want our archives to reflect all of the different cultures that are now present in the county. We have a lot of information from the cultures that were dominant back in the 1850s and 60s, that were settling the area, like the British, Irish, Scottish, and German people who were coming to join the Indigenous people and the Metis,” Sturdevant explains.
“But since that time, people from many other cultures have moved into the area, and brought parts of their culture to the development of the county. So I think anyone who may think they are not represented in the museum when they’ve come here, I’d encourage them to come as well and we’ll have a conversation about some of the items we’re looking for, or to be donated to the museum, so that we can assure we build a well-rounded collection here.”
Archives Awareness Week is free to attend, and also ties in with the ability to access the archives to research one’s own family history.