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Yesterday we arrived in 100 Mile House and we received a warm welcome from Konrad, Gerhard and April. We were all really excited to discover that we were going straight round the corner to watch the 100 Mile House Rodeo. A first for the whole team!!
Our arrival had been perfectly timed to allow us to experience the whole second half of this event, once we had made our way through the crowds and been lucky enough to find seats in the stands the afternoon started with the stick race. Some excited and some slightly reluctant children raced toy 'stick horses' around the course before receiving their prize of a bag of sweets. During the next couple of hours we were treated to barrel racing (horse racing around a course of three barrels, team roping (teams of two competing to rope a calf), bareback riding (riders attemping to ride an unbroken horse bareback) and bull riding (cowboys riding bucking bulls).
We were all impressed to see that the Rodeo was run in a very professional and safe (as possible) way but I must admit to feeling slightly nervous that the riders might be injured during the bull riding.
All in all it was a very different, interesting and thrilling afternoon. My personal favourite event was the barrel racing as the horsemanship and riding ability was quite something to see!
I have also discovered how to work the film setting on my camera and have a great video clip but unfortunately my technical ability does not stretch to being able to upload the film to the blog so I have uploaded some photos instead!

After another superb pot luck supper last night with our new friends in Williams Lake we were all up bright and early this morning to travel out to a small town called Likely. This weekend is the Victoria Day bank holiday weekend (in honour of Queen Victoria) and we arrived in Likely just in time for the their Victoria Day parade. The parade participants had gone to a lot of trouble with their costumes and props so we all enjoyed a colourful spectacle. Emily was called upon to judge the candidates for Miss Stampede Queen - a serious responsibility that she discharged very professionally. After the parade it was on to the Museum in nearby Cedar Point park. Jim kindly spent time showing us around the many fascinating exhibits before we strolled up to the lake side to see some of the gold mining machinery.
Before lunch we had time for the 20 minute drive to Quesnel Forks - an old gold mining town dating back to 1860s. It was mostly inhabited by a Chinese community and during its hey day 1893 - 1907 the mine produced almost 59, 000 ounces of gold. After the mine closed a few residents remained until the last man died in 1953. The town was left for many years but since 1995 the original log cabins have been lovingly restored. We were all interested to hear the stories of the towns and peek inside the small log cabins. Our visit finished back in Likely with lunch at the Hilton - a pub with an amazing collection of memorabilia which lined every wall - they now have one of our marks of appreciation to add to their collection!

Since my last post I have been to a variety of places, all very different from each other.

I started with a morning at the North Shore Credit Union in North Vancouver seeing their new electronic scanning system used as an alternative to managing the paper records. This has improved their efficiency enormously by reducing costs in both storage and staff time in retrieval of the records, and it was interesting to see an alternative method of managing modern records in a large organisation.

I then spent an afternoon at Exploration Place in Prince George, a science museum with an excellent educational focus. It was good to see the different outreach programmes with which they have attempted to attract new users who otherwise might not have come, from new displays, connections with the local First Nations groups and online exhibitions of the photographs.

Also in Prince George I got to spend some time with the archivist at the University of Northern British Columbia, which has a huge remit in terms of collecting area. In addition to being responsible for the archives, the archivist is also responsible for the university library's special collections of rare books, so it was good to be able to see how that is juggled as at St George's we also have collections of rare books to look after. They too have excellent links with the First Nations, so it has been very interesting to see the ways in which they are trying to reach out to the different groups in the community.

Finally, I spent a morning at the Quesnel and District Museum and Archives, a small community archive with a strong photographic collection, all of which have been digitised. It has been very interesting to see that small communities maintain their own archives, rather than sending them to the larger provincial archives as that is not common in the UK.

My vocational visits so far have been a good mixture of repositories, from the very small to the reasonably large, and have included the full spectrum of the record lifecycle. I am hoping to get to go to the provincial archives in Victoria as that would end our exchange with a visit to the very large, so round things off nicely!

Below are a couple of entries from local papers in BC:

www.prpeak.com/articles/2009/05/06/community/doc4a0104a950beb886311484.txt

www.bclocalnews.com/bc_cariboo/williamslaketribune/community/44769292.html

Fame and fortune await!

Ferries and Sunfish

On day 4 we headed north from Vancouver via ferry to the Sunshine Coast. The 1st ferry journey was spectacular in itself with gorgeous views of the surrounding mountains and up towards whistler and the sea to sky highway.

We took 2 ferries and were met off the first at Gibsons by Wayne and Bob who drove us via a spectacular lunch of mussels, to Half Moon Bay, a pretty little spot where I saw my 1st sunfish.

I know the water looks a bit murky, but I'd never even heard of them so was quite taken aback!

A fabulous Barbeque awaited us in Powell River (including my first taste of BC salmon), courtesy of Vivica, and a warm welcome from Ash and Dilyse, my new hosts.