This year, we were unable to celebrate our annual open house for the first time since the Sooke Region Museum opened in 1977.
With no indoor gallery events, the focus this year for collections management has shifted to improving outdoor and digital displays.
You may have observed some ongoing changes on the Sooke Road side of our property. These are changes to our new outdoor Forestry Path exhibit. This exhibit covers the logging world of the Sooke Region from pre-contact to present day and will combine physical artifacts with photographs, dioramas, and historical panels.
Our new workshop building has recently been finished, and we have started adding exhibit materials to its outer walls. We recently acquired a 1950s Ford F800 truck and log loader from the old Shepherd Mill site at 5080 Sooke Rd. that will find its new home in the Forestry Path.
If you are interested in being involved with restoration projects, please contact the museum in the new year.
We are currently in the translation stages of a two-year project with the Virtual Museum of Canada. The virtual exhibit, titled Women of the Sooke Region: From Pioneers to the Modern Wonder Woman, will explore the contributions of women in the Sooke Region. The exhibit will go online on International Women’s Day in 2021, available in both English and French.
We have made major progress in the digitization of our Sooke Region Historical Society photograph collection this summer, thanks to years of preparation work by dedicated summer students and volunteers. More than 4,500 photographs are listed online on our website and we continue to add photographs weekly. You can view the photographs on our website at sookeregionmuseum.com.
We look forward to producing new in-person exhibits when we are safely able to do so. In the meanwhile, we are crafting improved online and outdoor exhibit experiences for our visitors.
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Montana Stanley is the collections and exhibits manager for the Sooke Region Museum and Visitor Centre.
editor@sookenewsmirror.com
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