What do an antique World War I sock-making machine and a violin made by a world-renowned luthier have in common?
They are both new artifacts acquired by Pontiac Museum in the past few months. Both items were donated by local families to the museum, which is housed in an old train station on the Shawville Fairgrounds.
To some, this pair of objects might seem a curious one to include in a museum dedicated to the history of the Pontiac, but not to its volunteer curator, Glen Ansell.
He is on a mission to tell the stories of the objects that come in – something that wasn’t always done at the museum.
He said many of the thousands of artifacts housed in the museum were donated with only a name attached to them. Nothing is known of their history beyond the person who donated them.
His new project is to find out as much as he can about the new items coming into the museum, in order to make it more interesting for the museum’s visitors.
“We have a story about them owning the item, the story of the history of the item itself,” he said.
“And we’re growing that quite well, actually. So every time we get a new acquisition, we get a new story.”
Ansell spends 15 hours a week in the summer at the museum curating the collection and seeking out new donations. But he said the museum would be able to do more of this if they had more volunteers.
At last Tuesday’s meeting of the Pontiac Historical Society, the nonprofit group that runs the museum, Ansell and other society members discussed their recent challenges recruiting volunteers.
“There’s not that many people who are active in the museum, so we have to get more,” he told THE EQUITY following the meeting, noting that the museum has two or three volunteers in the museum during the summer but used to have more. “One of our goals is to get more volunteers and to get more people involved.”
Society president Robert Wills echoed that sentiment, adding that the society has looked into applying for grants in the past, but that it’s too much work for the team of volunteers, who are mostly retirees.
“We’re all retirees, all of the regular members of the society tend to be older folks,” Wills said. “We have other things to do.”
Wills told THE EQUITY he’s content with how the museum operates and what it offers to the community, but he would like to see more people coming through the doors, which he considers to be simply a matter of getting the word out.
Ansell said the society is brainstorming new ways to bring in new volunteers, including organizing projects that might attract volunteers interested in specific topics, such as the upcoming 200th anniversary of the beginning of the modern railway.
Special projects, he figures, might attract people passionate about certain specific aspects of the Pontiac’s history and may be more committed to making these stories available to the public.
The stories behind the artifacts
Ansell was able to dig up some history on the last two donations, writing about the discoveries on the society’s Facebook page.
The sock maker, donated by Bob Alexander of Shawville, was one of a line of machines distributed to Canadian women during World War I so they could make socks for soldiers in the trenches. The government, Ansell wrote, did not collect the machines after the war and many people continued to use them to make socks.
This particular machine was used by Alexander’s father up until his death in 1995 to make socks for his eight children.
“Their father was a farmer and worked in the bush during the winter, who made the socks,” wrote Ansell. “He made the socks right up until his death.”
The violin, donated by Bob Alexander’s brother Dennis, is one of hundreds of violins made by the luthier, who has been attending and displaying his instruments at conferences and competitions since 1984.
The violin chosen for donation was built in 1992 for Alexander’s friend and mentor Earl Young, who has a passion for collecting violins and owned 62 instruments at one time. When Young passed away, he left some 50 instruments to Alexander.
“The museum is very fortunate in being chosen by Dennis to receive such a fine acquisition. We will display it both to honour the memory of Earl Young and to highlight Dennis’s skill in constructing these works of art,” wrote Ansell.
A fresh face
New volunteer Sue Hemken shares in Ansell’s love of historical storytelling. She started volunteering with the society this fall after moving to Shawville, and has been in contact with a sock-knitting club in Pembroke about getting the museum’s sock machine up and running again.
She would like to get the machine fully functional so they can host sock-making demonstrations at the museum.
“Here we have artifacts like the sock machine [ . . . ] It would be nice to bring some of these things to life,” she said, adding that there is also a spinning wheel she would like to demonstrate.
She said she hopes these demonstrations can attract younger people to the museum so they can see what life was like in yesteryear.
“Some of the younger people, they don’t realize what life was like before – what was used, and the stories that come out of that,” she said.
“Inanimate things have a story to them, and it’s to animate them. It makes history a lot more interesting.”
Ansell said it’s promising to have younger volunteers like Hemken who are interested in local history and who want to embark on projects, especially ones that make history accessible to younger people.
“This is quite an important time for us. There’s people who have been there for a long time, and really have put in enough time. We need new people to come in and bring their energy,” he said, adding that is hopeful they will find new volunteers.
“Getting it done will be a challenge, but we’ll hopefully get one or two people who come in and really just want to hang out and put time into the museum.”
