For the past three years we have partnered with the Alberni Valley Museum to run historical photos on our editorial page, in a feature called “A Look Back.” The museum provides us with photos—most of them Sandra Oickle chooses for us, sometimes we request photos of certain events—and we run them with the information provided.
Sometimes we have to do a little digging to corroborate information, such as names or dates, and for some of them we have added information as a story and posted on our website, www.albernivalleynews.com.
We’ve learned a few things: did you know that “circa” means approximately five years either before or after a date mentioned? We learned that while researching a photo (PN13734) running in our April 26 edition, which shows men mired in mud laying cable for the Bamfield Cable Station. The photo was marked as 1963, however reporter Elena Rardon knew from researching a previous photo that the cable station closed in 1959 after cable was extended up the Alberni Inlet to Port Alberni. That’s when we learned the term “circa.”
READ: A LOOK BACK: Port Alberni’s fireboats
You’ll notice in this column and every Look Back feature that we refer to the photo number (they all start with PN). This is important from the museum’s perspective to identify every photo. You can look up photos by this number on the museum’s online digital archive (https://portalberni.pastperfectonline.com). There are 24,000 photos in the archive now.
One photo that we ran a couple of years ago of the fireboat MV Frank Harrison (PN02605) was mislabeled by year—it was quite obviously decades older than the photo information. After making some calls to retired firefighters, it turned out there were two fireboats named MV Frank Harrison: one built in 1942 and one in 1977. It made for an interesting story.
Sometimes we receive phone calls or correspondence from people with additional information for photos. One Christmas we ran a photo and a woman called to say she was one of the young children in the photo, and filled out the list of family members.
We follow up on the followups as best we can. We pass on the new information to the museum.
When Joanna Wright called us with her memories of Kooty’s Deluxe Foods after hearing Jon-Lee Kootnekoff was returning to town, she also mentioned that she is pictured in a Look Back photo (PN13815) that ran in our paper on March 29. That photo featured a midway set up along Third Avenue.
“That was the summer of 1969 and my daughter and I and my friend and her two girls are standing in the photo on the left side by the ticket booth,” Wright wrote. “It was called the Merchant Fun In Days.”
In our April 5 issue we ran a photo from June 1958 (PN13886) depicting Bronson’s Hardware burning on Johnston Road. Aaron Vissia, who owns AV Financial on lower Johnston Road, said this wasn’t the first fire on the block. “When we renovated the front of the building I found charred remains of wood and metal that are still in the walls and ceiling,” he said.
Every photo in A Look Back provides past and present generations with a glimpse into where we’ve come from. They’re not just a history lesson: every one of them is also a memory for someone.
— Susie Quinn is the Alberni Valley News editor and a history enthusiast.