ATIKOKAN — The Atikokan Museum plans to use provincial funding to move its history into the digital space.
Thunder Bay–Atikokan MPP Kevin Holland announced funding for a series of Atikokan projects, including the Atikokan Museum receiving $35,000 to hire an archivist assistant through the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation.
Curator Lois Fenton said the funding will pay for a full-time intern to help her digitize the records at the Atikokan Museum.
“The NOHFC intern funding has been essential to this museum. I am the only full-time employee and the work involved here requires two people,” Fenton said.
Fenton said their new archivist assistant is from southern Ontario and has an undergraduate degree in history and is certified in curatorial management.
“She’s a perfect candidate,” said Fenton.
Fenton described the task in front of her is immense. The museum itself is over 50 years old. During that time, the museum collected six massive filing cabinets of paper records detailing the rich history of Atikokan.
“If you know anything about recordkeeping in museums and archives, none of it is nice and simple and clean. History is very messy,” Fenton said.
Fenton also explains that she has a numerical system for filing and collecting information on the artifacts.
And as the intern is able to help Fenton comb through all their artifacts, they will be able to curate an easier way to access the information.
“Moving it from paper to digital records is like a complete change in the world. At this point, we will be able to identify what we have, we’ll be able to search for it by keyword, and also locate it in the museum. It’s just a huge step forward,” Fenton said.
Fenton reflects on the oldest artifact in her collection — the Baron Ground Caribou Antler was found in the Steep Rock Iron Mines.
“That radiocarbon dated back over 10,000 years which took the archaeological records of this area to a whole new record,” Fenton said.
According to Fenton, the first artifact that was donated to the museum was the Main Shay Locomotive which sits in the Atikokan’s historical park.
"It was rescued from the bush by the mechanics of Caland Mine and they reconditioned it and put it on exhibit.”
It was at this point, in Fenton’s words, “you had a community waking up and saying, hey we have a history here, and it hasn’t been collected and it hasn’t been recorded.”
The problem with keeping paper records is that paper becomes brittle over time. To ensure that the history of Atikokan will not be lost, digitizing those records become essential to avoid them being lost.
Also, technology is a little more versatile when creating new exhibits. Fenton said that they do have slideshow presentations at the museum currently, but once the digitizing of these historical records is complete, there is a potential to have some of them on display for patrons to discover.
"It’s one of the most dramatic ways you can present the material that we have," she said. "But in terms of making an exhibit, unless you are working with the records, you don’t know what we have or where it is.”
For example, Fenton explains that Atikokan is a sport-orientated community. When entering Atikokan, there is a sign that showcases all the athletes who call the town their home.
“Each one of them has an immense story and the whole community is behind them. So, to find out what they did, what their records were, and get photographs of them. We have over 100 boxes of photographs and documents and there are at least 200 in each box. There is no way I can display all of that, but what I can do is bring out certain exhibits and that’s what we call our rotating gallery,” said Fenton.
For Fenton, ensuring that her patron has a rewarding experience when they enter the museum is much more than entertainment, it’s about the community itself.
“I am really excited about this because post-COVID I can do an exhibit the way I like to do which means you invite the public in. You have music. You have food. You have a first-person account. It’s very lively. It is memorable. It’s an occasion for the community,” Fenton said.
“Our mandate isn’t just to attract people off the highway because we have a museum. There is a whole population of people who have a following for community museums because they know that’s where the hidden stories are."
