Scanning project capturing region’s history in photos

Well over 700 photographs depicting the region’s history between 1890 and 1990 have already been digitally captured half way through the Preserving Yarmouth Memories project. “To see the quality and variety of the photographs is great,” says Jamie Serran, archivist at the Yarmouth County Museum and Archives.

The project is a group effort of Western Counties Regional Library, the Yarmouth County Museum and Archives and Community Access Program (CAP) and was made possible through funding from the federal government’s New Horizons for Seniors program.

Serran says most of community visits have resulted in contributions to the digital project.

The photographs scanned to date go as far back as the 1890s and cover genealogy, buildings, landmarks, events and places. “There are harbour shots of the way Yarmouth harbour used to look, a couple of interesting shots of the Markland Hotel in 1924 and some greats photos of the Arcadia area in the 1940s and 1950s,” says CAP coordinator Ryan McKenzie. It is his team of summer students that has been visiting community halls in Yarmouth County and scanning and digitizing these photographs from people’s private collections.

McKenzie, who lives in Arcadia, was unaware before this project that his community had a hotel, a Chicken Arcade restaurant and a doughnut shop in the 1950s. The grounding of the SS North Star on Green Island in 1919 has also been captured and submitted when the team visited Pinkney’s Point.

The entire project will be posted on Filckr, the online photo management and sharing application, and are copyright protected. Flickr allows the photographs to be listed by category and include information about the photographs in the form of tags.

The scanning team is making one more round of community halls before winding down the project.

Photographs should fall into these categories: $ Street scenes/neighbourhoods $ Businesses (existing and gone) $ Houses $ Churches $ Landmarks (monuments, fountains, etc.) $ Parks $ Community events

The photographs will be scanned on the spot and immediately returned to their owners.

Here is the remaining schedule of visits by the project team to area community halls:

Wednesday, July 29, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Port Maitland

Saturday, Aug. 8, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Deerfield/ Pleasant Valley hall

Wednesday, Aug. 12, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Melbourne hall

Saturday, Aug. 15, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Pinkney’s Point hall

Monday, Aug. 17, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Port Maitland

Saturday, Aug. 22, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Arcadia hall

Monday, Aug. 24, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Cape Forchu Lighthouse

Wednesday, Aug. 26, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Kemptville hall

People with larger collections of photographs can call the library to book an appointment to have the collection scanned. To book appointments call the Yarmouth library’s Gates Computer Lab at 742-2486 ext. 243 or the museum at 742-5539. -30-