When: Thursday January 29,  2015  7pm - 9pm
Where: Magrath Museum

Description: The Magrath History And Museum Association presents “Find Your Ancestor Night” Thursday, January 29th – 7-9 pm.  Specialists will be at the museum to help you trace your ancestral lines - bring names and any vital information you have about your ancestor and see how far back your line can be traced. Also see if you are related to royalty or other famous people!

For more information contact: Wes Balderson – 758-6380 Wendy Coleman – 758-3483 Steve Brinton – 758-3424

A Great Christmas Gift:
Booklet "Wit, Wisdom and Opinion" For Sale. $20.00
These are comments made by J. Alfred Ririe  in his weekly Magrath Trading Company Store News.  The comments range from about 1934 to 1964.  The booklet consists of 37 written pages.
Contact Alan or Patricia Dudley 403-758-3200 or Wendy Coleman 403-758-3483 

We have a new summer student working here til the end of August. Her name is Quincee and she is great. About a week ago, Quincee proved Magrath is really that charming. A lady came by a little lost and looking for a relative's house. She gave Quincee the address, which Quincee said, no no, who is your family? Once she had the name she had the lady there in no time. Only in Magrath do last names make more sense than a street address! 

It's Magrath Days this week! In honor of it,let's take a flash back to the floats of the past. Feel free to comment and leave your favorite parade and Magrath Day memories.  

What is history? I remember the day in Grade 3 when I clicked that History sounded and was spelled a lot like His-story. I know most of you probably made this connection way earlier, but I take a few more clicks than the rest of us so please forgive me. Anyways the more and more I work at the museum the more clicking that happens. History isn't some giant event we're all prepared for. I don't think anyone wakes up aware that that day, they are going to be involved in some life changing event. What we consider history is just when someone is living their lives, in their day, and someone was smart enough to take note of it and learn from it. 

Yesterday my little cousin came through the Magrath Museum and was just amazed to see his Grandma on the wall as one of the dancers in the Magrath 50 Year Celebration Program. He couldn't understand why ordinary us deserved to be in a museum because all we did was live. But that's the cool part, we've lived, and we've mattered and we've contributed simply by being here and being apart of Magrath. We take note, and we have a lot of notes. My grandparents stories and histories have been recorded and are on file, and I bet yours have too. We have files and files of stories and stories. Memories from the likes of Nyal Fletcher, Lawrence Turner, Elizabeth Strong. Come find your stories and roots, because not only is history relative, it's even more fun when you are related. And don't forget, in 20 years, someone may think your stories are worth taking note of. 

The Trading Company, or today known as Rooster's, has come a long way considering it started out in a tent. We have a few memories from one of our favorite destinations on Main Street, so let's take a look at some shall we? Memories as recorded by Lorena Rodgers:

Alf Ririe and Marj Balderson, people from the store like Johnny Bourne and Junior Turner are spoken of with legendary status.

For a small community store, customers could find things at the Trading Company that just were not available anywhere else.

Ken Robinson, originally of Del Bonita and now living in Magrath, remembers when he couldn’t find any place in southern Alberta to buy horseshoes, not even Lethbridge, but he could find them at the Trading Company. Some of the old horseshoes are now in the Trading Company display.

Marietta Wilcox says the same was true for fabric. Originally of Del Bonita, her mother always stopped at the Trading Company as it had the best fabric. “You couldn’t get tricot anywhere else.”

George Harker relates that when he was three or four years old he found a penny on the road. At the Trading Company he could buy three fishhooks for a penny or four hooks for a penny. He remembers he bought three because “the ones that were four for a penny looked too small to catch any fish.”

Duane Thomson says you could find anything you wanted at the Trading Company or Johnny Bourne would order it in for you. While working at the Research Centre in Lethbridge, he knew if they couldn’t find something they needed in Lethbridge they could get it from the Trading Company.

A few years after Duane married, he moved back to Magrath with his young family. His wife Carma remembers being welcomed to town at the Trading Company. “Johnny Bourne said hi and said I must be Duane Thomson’s wife. ‘What’s your name? Where are you from? Who’re your parents? When’s your birthday?’ And of course he remembered my birthday from then on. He gave the kids candy, and we felt genuinely welcomed into the community.”

Patricia Dudley says when her children were young, one of her boys came home from the Trading Company with something he had not paid for. She took him back to the store to return the item and the boy got a “talking to” from Junior Turner. Rather then scolding him, he told him that the Dudley name is a very honoured name in Magrath and he needed to live up to the family name. Patricia expressed how grateful she was for how Junior handled that situation, and the lesson stuck with her son.

Seeing a display in the exhibit representing the butcher department, Donna Thompson remembered working there as a youth. “Wrapping the liver was the worst,” she said, recalling how the meat would slip around in the brown paper packaging and demonstrating the technique to wrap it quickly and keep it from falling out on the counter. “I really wanted to get transferred to the ladies’ clothing department.” No luck with that, but she did get moved to the grocery floor.

As part of the family that ran the Trading Company, Wes Balderson says that as he grew up he remembers talk about the store being dinner table conversation. His wife Lorraine says, “I don’t think the kids thought groceries cost any money. They didn’t know that dad later got the bill for it.”

The Electric Theatre

East of the Elton Press was the Kirby Hotel on property later holding the lumberyard of E.P Tanner. East of Elton Press the Electric Theatre built by Clare Bennett. Both structures were put up shortly after Magrath became a town. It had the first electric light in town. The generator and engine for the lights were housed in a lean-to shed in the rear of the building.

The engine was a one cylinder stationary I.H.C. gas engine with a pair of huge flywheels about five feet across. Some of these same engines were used as power for threshers and other farm machinery. None of them were too reliable but they were the first replacement for the huge steamer engines. The steam engines had several disadvantages. One big disadvantage was the number of men required to operate the machine, and the second was the necessity of having a qualified engineer in charge which meant a specially inspection of the machine each year and also specially engineer’s wages. There was also the danger of setting the place on fire in the harvest, though it seldom happened.

The gas engine could be operated by anyone who could handle the thing and required only one man. There were soon gas-operated tractors but these engines were portable and weighted about four tons. All that were in the district came to a bud end. The operation was about the same for all of them.

If the engineer got just the right amount of gas allowed for, a turn of the flywheel by one or two men got a big bang out of the engine and the engineer had to regulate the choke quickly. If the flywheel got a second explosion before it ran down, things were going pretty well and likely after about two or three more violent explosions the thing would settle down to work.

When I was reading through the Power of the Dream, A Collection of Photographs and Stories of Magrath Through the 20th Century I stumbled upon this great little section that should be shared. "So Magrath is a hundred years old. Big deal. Parliament probably won't sit up and take notice. It's not likely to change the course of events in London or Washington. The effect on climatic change will be scarcely noticeable. It will cause not even a small ripple in the daily schedule at Buckingham Palace.  And yet, those who think of Magrath as home, even those whose careers and life choices have taken them elsewhere, it's a significant landmark in history. This is a place that shaped them and will be apart of them forever. The history of Magrath cannot be told in a litany of official events and statistics. it is told in the lives of its people, of those who live here or who have lived  here."  

What you do today may not seem all that significant. But all that you do today becomes tomorrow's history. It will matter to the children of the next generation, the future inhabitants of Magrath, and to all those that call, called or will call Magrath home. We may not have the biggest influence in the world, but we still have an influence, and that little bit is enough to matter. And just think, the time that little Jimmy escaped the house and ran down main street in nothing, not even his diaper, may seem stressful now, but it will make a heck of a story to tell at the museum in 30 years. 
-Kaytie

Ever wondered what the town looks like from a satellite aerial image? Come into the museum and find out! This year one of the newest editions is a table displaying Magrath as a satellite image taken in 2009. The table has historic sights labeled by buttons that light up its location in town when pushed. Come in and find your house, show your children what areas of town you use to hang out in and see the town's growth from a new perspective, it is definitely worth coming in and checking out. See you here soon! 

We are preparing for a new set of summer student helpers. Watch for new content coming your way soon. Kaytie Cook is taking over for her sister Cori Frogley from last summer. They may confuse you if you don't know they are twins. But just smile and nod hello like I do. Kaytie has same roots as Cori and will answer hello to both names. Nigel Goodwin is from Southern Alberta as well, currently commuting from Lethbridge and working on editing media for the museum.