If you’re wondering where to squirrel away all your presents from Christmas, Kathryn Ivany can relate.
Edmonton’s city archivist is the keeper of 90,000 items at the artifact centre, many of which came to the city as gifts.
“We have hair brushes and kitchen gadgets, things like that, which date from … the 1900s all the way up until 1960s, 1970s. We have an X-ray machine, we have sleighs, we have carts, we even have a milk wagon,” said Ivany, the city’s supervisor of heritage and special facilities.
Kathryn Ivany stands amidst the furniture on the second floor of the City of Edmonton’s artifact centre. (Adrienne Lamb/CBC)
The former O’Keefe Brewery Building in the Strathcona neighbourhood is stuffed to the rafters with pieces of Edmonton’s history, from Emily Murphy’s magistrate’s chair to an ivory baton made for the Commonwealth Games in 1978.
The artifact centre was established in the 1960s to preserve and maintain a supply of authentic historic artifacts for the John Walter Museum and Fort Edmonton Park, Ivany said.
As time marched on, the collection ballooned. To this day, Edmontonians are welcome to call the city’s 311 number if they feel they have a historically significant treasure they want to donate.
And then there are the presents Ivany can’t part with — 2,500 gifts to Edmonton mayors throughout the years, from “a lump of coal to little tiny pieces of jigsaw puzzles and this variety of gifts from all over the world.”
Ivany points to a shelf of sculptures, figurines and other art from delegations from Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang, the northernmost province in China. Harbin and Edmonton became twin cities in the 1980s in the hopes of improving cultural and trade relations.
A telephone switch, just one example of the kinds of gifts given to mayors and held in trust at the City of Edmonton’s artifact centre. (Rick Bremness/CBC)
“This documents the transition from electronic switching in telephones to digital switching in telephones,” according to Ivany, “It was a gift to the city so now it’s in trust.”
Heather Kerr is one of the three staffers who can locate the objects and the tales they tell.
“The first time I came up here I was so amazed and I look at the opportunities and the stories that are associated with every object. I know some other people who might come up here and be just overwhelmed,” Kerr said.
With Fort Edmonton Park closed due to construction for the next couple of years, Kerr and the other artifact staff are hard at work.
Benita Hartwell, Kathryn Ivany, Heather Kerr and Sherry Haley are the keepers of the collection. (Adrienne Lamb/CBC)
“We’re also bringing quite a few things back as well so we can work on them more carefully here at the artifact centre in our workshop downstairs. We’re also re-evaluating many of the displays down there.”
But both Kerr and Ivany believe the current location for the growing collection is far from ideal.
For starters, the brewery is more than 100 years old, and lacking when it comes to climate control, especially in the spring.
“The walls downstairs will actually run with water for about two weeks as the melt comes through,” Ivany said.
They’ve moved certain sensitive artifacts out of the basement and every year experts come in to test for mould.
Gadgets and gear of years gone by, like spinning wheels, are among the 90,000 items stored at the artifact centre. (Rick Bremness/CBC)
Ivany confirms a plan for a new artifact centre was conceived back in 2013 for at a cost of roughly $20 million, but given the current economic climate, she understands why it’s not a top priority for the City of Edmonton.
“A better storage facility, that would be grand,” Kerr said. She longs for a way for more people to see the treasures she holds dear.
But in the meantime, she adds: “We’re here and we do the best we can with what we have.”
You can see more from the City of Edmonton Artifact Centre on Our Edmonton Saturday at 10 a.m., Sunday at noon and Monday at 11 a.m. on CBC TV.