Board of Directors

Our Mission

The Galt Museum & Archives engages and educates our communities in the human history of southwestern Alberta by preserving and sharing collections, stories and memories that define our collective identity and guide our future.

Our Vision

The Galt Museum & Archives is a vibrant gathering place that meets historical, cultural and educational needs.

Our Values

Stewardship

• We treasure and protect the stories, objects, memories and relationships of our communities.

• We advocate for history, culture and historical education.

Creativity and Innovation

• We thrive on challenge, ingenuity and improvement.

• We believe in and foster life-long learning.

Integrity and Authenticity

• We are open, honest and respectful.

• We ensure the authenticity of our collections, exhibits, education and programs.

Teamwork and Cooperation

• We encourage diversity of opinion.

• We find merit in collaboration and partnerships.

Excellence

• We believe that with dedication, passion and commitment, we strive for our best performance.

• We respect the skills and expertise of others and cherish diversity.

Letter from the Directors

The story unfolding in 2018 is one of dedication, creativity and curiosity as we work to serve our visitors and citizens.

As you will see in this report, the exhibitions shared with museum visitors ranged from stories of collecting to cinema in southern Alberta to Decoding E-money. Many visitors came to understand more about the Pandemic of 1918 and 1919 in this region. We investigated how Lethbridge citizens prepared for nuclear attack in the 1950s. There were many more exhibits presented in 2018.

Our programmers engaged school children, adults, families, seniors, local participants and tourists with our many programs. Our service to the public remained at a high volume in spite of maternity leaves and new educational staff. Our archives served researchers effectively while our collections team enhanced our object records. Additional websites and increased digital access were provided to increase efficiency and availability of our resources thereby providing stronger online access to our residents. Our community continues to entrust us with objects, media and stories to be preserved and shared; for that we are grateful.

We successfully completed our second full season of service at Fort Whoop-Up with an increase in attendance of 19%. We are ecstatic with the progress of development of this complex story and we are thankful for the community’s enthusiastic support for this work.

Our volunteers are one of the most valued assets of the Galt, contributing more than 9,265 hours of service. With their help, we preserved and shared, engaged and educated, listened and responded … about the past … for the future.

Board, staff and volunteers are excited about a new business plan for 2019–2022 which will focus on enhancing the development of Fort Whoop-Up, reviewing our services for impact and efficiency, seeking community input, and working with our tourism partners in the region.

We are pleased to be working with enthusiastic and curious staff and volunteers of the Galt and thank them for their commitment and caring; without them the work could not be done!

Respectfully submitted,

Curatorial

The Curatorial department is central to the mission of the Galt. It plans, researches and prepares exhibits that showcase the history and culture of our region. Curator Aimee Benoit develops future exhibit topics based on public interest. She works with our Archives and Collections departments, as well as community groups, to gather information, artifacts and documents that discuss specific topics in depth.

Once the exhibits have been researched and written, Exhibit Designer Brad Brown creates, assembles and mounts the exhibits. These include permanent exhibits like those in the Discovery Hall, some exterior exhibits as well as temporary exhibits like special exhibits, hallway and meeting room exhibits.

Permanent Exhibits

Discovery Hall

New vinyl bench coverings were installed in the Kainai arbour, and a new Paige’s Newsroom kiosk was commissioned for the Lethbridge Herald display. Artifacts were rotated through the Sick’s Lethbridge Brewery component and new artifacts were prepared for the Doukhobor installation.

Exterior Exhibits

A rubberized surface was installed in October 2018 in the children’s outdoor play space. Two concrete “ammolite” benches were fabricated and one was installed in the play space, along with signage to interpret the coal mine wall.

Temporary Exhibits

Spring Season

Attendance: 3,188

JAN 27–APR 29.18 For Keeps: Collecting Memories

Temporary gallery; in-house exhibit guest curated by Jane Edmundson

For Keeps: Collecting Memories at the Galt Museum & Archives featured artifacts from the Galt’s collections that have different kinds of human histories attached to them, alongside personal collections belonging to local residents. The exhibit asked visitors to consider, “What transforms an everyday object into a treasure worth preserving?”

FEB 17–MAY 27.18 Soar! A History of Gliding in Southwestern Alberta

Main hallway; in-house exhibit created in partnership with the Lethbridge Soaring Club

Gliding began in Lethbridge in 1930, when a small group of enthusiasts built a homemade glider and took to the skies. This exhibit explored the early history of gliding in southwestern Alberta and the continuing legacy of the sport in more recent years.

FEB 10–JUN 03.18 Women’s Hands Building a Nation

Lower hallway; travelling exhibit by the Chinook Textiles Guild, Calgary

This collection of fibre art works celebrated women’s accomplishments and contributions to Canada’s growth as a nation. The art pieces featured specific women who rose to challenges they faced or gained recognition for what they achieved.

Summer Season

Attendance: 4,465

MAY 19–SEP 03.18 Cinescapes: Movies in Southwestern Alberta

Temporary gallery; in-house exhibit

This exhibit explored the history of movie entertainment in southwestern Alberta from silent films and early “talkies,” to drive-ins and multiplexes. Cinescapes showcased artifacts and stories from the local film industry, examples of cinema technologies, a feature on Lethbridge’s “picture palaces” through the twentieth century, and hands-on activities that engaged visitors in some of the mysteries of movie making.

JUN 02–OCT 14.18 Pandemic at Home: The 1918–19 Flu

Main hallway; in-house exhibit guest curated by Ashley Henrickson

A viral influenza swept the globe in 1918 and 1919 killing between 50 and 100 million people, including 4,000 Albertans. This exhibit explored the global pandemic on a micro scale by considering how individual families in Lethbridge were affected by the tragedy.

JUN 09–OCT 07.18 Let Justice Be Done: The Alberta Provincial Police, 1917–1932

Lower hallway; travelling exhibit from the Provincial Archives of Alberta

For a brief period in the early twentieth century, Alberta had its own provincial police force. This exhibit told the story of the Alberta Provincial Police (APP)’s creation, its reputation as one of the most efficient police organizations of its kind in the world, and its ultimate demise.

Fall Exhibits

Attendance: 4,386

SEP 22.18–JAN 06.19 Decoding E-money

Temporary gallery; travelling exhibition from the Bank of Canada Museum

Supported by Canadian Heritage Exhibit Circulation Grant of $15,000

This dynamic travelling exhibit from the Bank of Canada Museum invited visitors to explore the world of e-money. It included more than 60 artifacts covering the way Canadians have spent their money over the course of 200 years and introduced the high-tech intricacies of Bitcoin and other web-based currencies through fun, interactive displays.

OCT 20.18–FEB 10.19 On Guard, Lethbridge!

Main hallway; in-house exhibit guest curated by Danica Renke, Master of Arts student from the University of Lethbridge

In the 1950s, Cold War tensions created mounting fears of a nuclear attack in North America. This exhibit featured artifacts from the Galt collections that highlighted how Lethbridge citizens prepared to survive disaster through civil defence training.

OCT 13.18–FEB 17.19 Bruce Bairnsfather: Voice of the Soldiers

Lower hallway; in-house exhibit

British cartoonist Bruce Bairnsfather captured front-line experiences of the First World War through beloved characters such as “Old Bill.” This collection of Bairnsfather memorabilia evoked the unique culture of soldiers at war, 100 years after Armistice.

Fort Whoop-Up

The curatorial team supported the ongoing development of Fort Whoop-Up visitor experiences by enhancing exhibits and content, with the assistance of three staff from the Yates Memorial Centre (Robert Stanford, Jason Eveleigh and Wendy Romas). Highlights include a re-recorded orientation video and new projection system, a display of trade-era Blackfoot clothing in the theatre alcove, a new mural and artifact case in the orientation gallery, a new fur press and archaeology text panel in the compound, a video presentation of black powder firearms in the armoury and audio stories throughout the fort rooms.

Another 181 objects were acquired, inventoried, labelled and added to displays in 2018.

Off-Site

The curatorial team supported a number of community initiatives during the year through curatorial advice and the loan of exhibit materials. These initiatives included:

• Loan of Perpetuating the Memory of Vimy Ridge exhibit to Devil’s Coulee Museum

• Loan of Pandemic at Home: The 1918-19 Flu exhibit to the Cardston Courthouse Museum

• Hosted an Elders gathering in partnership with the Esplanade Arts & Heritage Centre, to invite guidance on the future of Indigenous collections

• Exhibits advice provided to Nikka Yuko Japanese Gardens, Lethbridge Sports Hall of Fame, Devil’s Coulee Museum and Lethbridge College

Collections

The main job of the Collections department is to collect and preserve both items, and information about those items, that have special significance in the story or feel of Lethbridge or southern Alberta. Collections staff and volunteers are always looking for community treasures that are especially important to current events to bring into the Museum’s collection; staff conduct research into those items and into other items that weren’t well documented when they were originally donated to the Museum.

Donations

In 2018, Collections registered a historic low number of individual offers, tying 2013. Registered offers since 2009 range from lows of 29 (2013 & 2018) to a high of 51 (2010 & 2014). The volume of objects offered in a given year varies greatly, dependent on the size of the collections offered that year. In 2018, the vast majority of offers were single-object collections.

Public attention around an active donation offer was gained on November 22, 2018 when the Galt notified local media of the offer of the “Alberta Meat Market” neon sign to the Museum. The story ran in the Lethbridge Herald as well as on Global.

Highlights

Vets Hockey Sweater, c. 1919–1923.

Sweater donated to the Galt by Harold Palmer. In the early 1970s, he inherited a hockey bag from his late father Murray. “Well, [the sweater] was in my dad’s hockey bag and he died in 1971... [My son] got [the connection] off the internet that there was a hockey team by the name of Vets in Lethbridge from 1919. I thought that this is where the sweater originated from then because there wouldn’t be many hockey clubs called Vets.” Galt Collections staff were surprised to find no references online to a Vets team in Canada, outside of a photo of a “Lethbridge Hockey Team” during its 1920/21 season. The players wore sweaters identical to the one donated. Further research in the Lethbridge Herald indicated that a player with the last name Palmer but no first initial played for the Lethbridge Vets team in late 1923 until early 1924 as well as for a team in Claresholm in early 1926.

Tapestry, “Gobelin”, c. 1955.

Donor Mary Witdouck (née Bouw) acquired the tapestry in 1955 while resident as a 17-year-old on a farm in the Netherlands. According to Witdouck it is “Gobelin” from Belgium, purchased for her as a gift in advance of her immigration to southern Alberta. “The day that we would leave [for Canada] was only about three weeks [away] ... around that time, a man riding a transport bicycle stopped by our house. He was selling tapestries and asked my mother if he could show them to her. ...Several of us girls, along with my mother stood around the salesman as he showed us the different ones. My mother then said to us older girls, ‘If you [would] like to have one, you may all pick one.’ We were happy to [each] get tapestries... We carefully wrapped them [for they] would come along to Canada.”

Button Accordion, c. late 1920s.

Donor Leslie Morton donated a button accordion which had belonged to her grandfather, Giuseppe “Joseph” Bridarolli. Joseph was born in Italy and came to Lethbridge in 1903, returning to Italy to marry Maria Berte. Not long after the couple’s marriage and the birth of their daughter Ann, Joseph and Maria returned to southern Alberta with their new family. They settled first in Coalhurst and then moved to Staffordville. Joseph’s 1972 obituary includes the detail that, “He was well-known as an accordionist at numerous public and private gatherings in Lethbridge for over 60 years.” According to Morton, her grandfather had the accordion “made for him there [Trento, Italy] and sent over [to Canada].” When asked about her personal memories of her grandfather’s use of the accordion, Morton said, “When I was a little girl, we would go over to their house at 909 8 Street North [and] he’d always play. He’d sit in his kitchen [or]... on a bench by the back door outside and he would play something for us. At Christmas, my grandparents would come over and he would play the accordion. My mother would play the violin, my sister the piano... He always was there playing his accordion.”

Cataloging

The Galt received an AMA grant in December 2017 to be used, in part, to catalogue past years’ new acquisitions. Strong accesions in 2016 and 2017 resulted in a sizable volume of objects to be catalogued in 2018. Objects accessioned in 2018 grew the workload further—albeit at a lesser rate as new acquisitions fell in 2018.

There is tremendous benefit to getting new accessions onto the database as they are among the best documented collections at the Galt and because their cataloging completes, in a sense, the Museum’s obligation to provide public access to donors’ treasures.

Research

Collections’ focus on capturing its objects’ voices was a hallmark of its work in 2018. The 57 interviews that were conducted in 2018 represent 39.6 hours of newly documented researchable content. Prior to its solicitation and recording, this cultural resource, living memory, was not likely part of the historical record. Most of the relevancy audit work was done by a term collections assistant, hired through an Alberta Museums Association grant.

Archives

This year was marked by several improvements in service delivery in the Archives. The most notable improvement was the launch of the the new online database. The upgraded version of the online access system became operational in October. It features an integrated search between the Archives and the Collections, improved image display, new intuitive layout and a better mobile interface. The new database has received very positive feedback from users and Galt volunteers. On the back side, the electronic records of the Archives and Collections were moved to a new server, which solved some recurring connectivity issues.

In cooperation with the Galt management team, the Archives has revised its fee schedule. Most fees did not change—keeping the reproduction charges affordable for the benefit of the community. A special fee exemption was granted to local students and teachers to encourage educational use of archival records. Media outlets are now subject to regular fees, with special exceptions granted to non-profit media on a case-to-case basis. The Galt Archives started offering a selection of basic archival supplies for sale through a store inventory.

In the summer, the Archives launched an audiovisual initiative. This series of projects focuses on description, digitization and promotion of the Archives’ considerable collection of film, video and audio recordings. The most significant part of this collection is the Global Television fonds. The local television station recorded its programs on 1” and Betamax tapes. Because of preservation vulnerabilities, the tapes became a priority for digitization. Since 2017, over 200 recordings have been converted into digital form.

Old television programs have become a pillar of the online content shared by the Archives on Facebook. An average archival video post garners several thousand unique views and over a hundred reactions, comments and shares. Local music clips, interviews, community footage and old commercials find strong response among our followers. Archival videos, photographs and stories also direct online traffic to the Galt website and database thus contributing to the overall promotional effort.

Acquisitions

In 2018, the Galt Archives received 102 donations of records. Below is a selection of the year’s most significant acquisitions.

• 9 vinyl music recordings of the Knox United Church Choir

• 6 additional letters of Capt. Balfour, Commander of HMCS Lethbridge, 1943

• 9 reels of 8 mm amateur films from the Olson family

• A collection of photographs from the Logan family

• 3 scrapbooks and other materials of local Beta Sigma Phi club

• 1 m of records of the Waterton Natural History Association

• 1.2 m of records of the Canadian Doukhobor Society

• 44 photographs related to POWs in Camp 133 in Lethbridge during the Second World War

• Over 2,000 slides of 1950s Lethbridge produced by William J. Hasulak

• Materials from shortwave radio operator Edward K. Redekopp

• Journals of Hans E. Wight, an engineer and Lethbridge MLA in the 1930s

Outreach Activities

Archives staff and special presenters hosted 11 public presentations in the Archives, wrote six articles that were featured in Lethbridge Living magazine, submitted approximately 110 photos to run in the Flashback Series section of the Lethbridge Herald and posted archival content to social media twice a week, generating over 10,000 reactions, comments and shares.

Long Term Projects

Lethbridge Herald Project

Digitizing and cataloguing of the Lethbridge Herald fonds is a multi-year project, performed by a group of volunteers. Current status: 75% complete.

A. E. Cross Studio Project

Cataloguing and re-housing the A. E. Cross Studio photos is a multi-year project, performed by volunteers. Current status: 55% complete.

Fort Whoop-Up

Fort Whoop-Up had a great 2018 season with a 19% increase in visitors compared to the previous year. Food and ice cream sales at the Fort both increased by approximately 180% in 2018.

This is particularly impressive as Travel Alberta indicates that provincial visitation at historic sites and museums was down by 9.3% compared to the previous year.

We are grateful to the community for their support during the 2018 season and encourage them to bring their visiting friends and family to the Fort for fun, history and ice cream.

The Galt has operated Fort Whoop-Up since June 2016. The Galt immediately began creating a superb visitor experience that has grown every year since. In the lead up to the 2017 season, the Fort’s visitor experience was enhanced by adding curatorial video and audio throughout the Fort, creating additional interpretive panels, and adding authentic Blackfoot clothing and replica artifacts to the displays at the Fort. This was possible due to the help of Yates Memorial Centre staff who were reassigned to the Fort while the renovation of the Yates was occurring. We are very grateful for their help and expertise.

Partnerships with community organizations were essential to improving the visitor experience. The production and installation of video and audio interpretation throughout the Fort and the replacement of the previous yellow rope fencing with permanent wood fencing and gates were facilitated by the Yates staff. The New West Theatre, the South Alberta Horse Artillery, the Chinook Woodturning Guild and the Fort Whoop-Up Black Powder Club all participated in creating special events and authentic experiences for visitors during the season.

Visitors were very happy with the experiences offered at the Fort, with positive feedback and reviews being given. Google reviewer Stephanie Martin said, “It was a step back in time and a look into the rich history of southern Alberta. Educational and interactive.”

More improvements are planned to take place during the off season this winter. These include improving costuming and adding furs, crates, and more items to rooms throughout the Fort. We will continue to expand storylines and displays throughout the Fort, improve the Blackfoot camp area and develop the south bastion interpretation. One big improvement planned for the winter is to work with local groups to add a replica cannon for next summer.

Education

The Education department’s purpose is to share knowledge with visitors to the Galt. The primary function of educational programming is to facilitate students’ search for meaning and relevance in relation to collections, exhibits and the past.

The Galt continues to have a strong reputation for its educational programs. This year we delivered 504 programs to 12,026 students and approximately 2,108 adults who accompanied them, for a total of 14,134 participants at curriculum-based education programs.

The majority of the attendees came from Lethbridge, while other classes travelled from Taber, Raymond, Brooks, Chestermere, Okotoks and Medicine Hat to partake in our programs. We also welcomed 400 students from Thailand and Quebec.

We continued to improve our programming through ongoing development. This year we focused on creating hands-on activities which help students engage meaningfully with the past. For example, students in grades K–2 can now learn about Alberta’s immigration history by exploring suitcases filled with cultural objects that have been curated by local immigrants. We also worked closely with Archives and Collections to provide students with opportunities to interact with and analyze primary sources. The 379 students who participated in “Southern Alberta at War” traveled to Archives to analyze medals, letters and a diary from the First World War to uncover the incredible and heartbreaking stories these object tell.

The Education programs were supported by the Friends of the Galt Museum & Archives, who supported the re-development of “Discover the Diversity” and partially funded the transportation of 314 buses bringing local students to the Galt.

The Southern Alberta Regional Heritage Fair was held at the Galt in May and was attended by 61 students. The top two students advanced to the national Young Citizens competition, at which one of them received an honorable mention.

The Education website, launched in August, allowed teachers to request class programs online, with about 70% of requests now coming from the website form.

Public Programming

Community Programs

The Galt provides programming, in conjunction with our educational programs, that invite the community to interact with local history through activities themed around the content of our rotating exhibits.

In 2018, the Galt held over 191 public programs and welcomed 9,130 community members. Programs continued to interpret our local history and culture with a particular focus on the special and permanent exhibits. Everyday interpretation continued this year through informative brochures, booked and impromptu tours, and children’s treasure hunts.

Adult & Seniors Programs

We offered dozens of programs for our adult and senior visitors. A total of 732 attended our 17 Café Galt sessions. We offered six guided historical walking tours of the cemetery to 109 participants. The 24 Wednesday at the Galt programs were attended by 514 people.

We continued our Daytime Galt Workshop series, in partnership with Alberta Health Services Therapeutic Recreation. This program provides hands-on art projects and history lessons for adults, including those requiring an accessible environment. Blackfoot history, painted rocks and memory boxes were some of the topics offered. A total of 1,467 participants attended the 20 sessions. We offered some Galt Workshops on Thursday evenings on topics such as braided rugs, pinhole cameras and tile coasters. We welcomed 206 participants to the 12 sessions.

We continued the Indigenous History program which began in 2017. Blackfoot Elders and community members led the exploration of topics related to Blackfoot history and culture. We had a total of 223 participants attend the 14 sessions. In fall 2018 we also started a new program of Blackfoot Language Classes taught by Julius Delaney. We received a very positive public response and saw 340 people attend the 10 sessions. We also offered three summer bus tours including Waterton Wildflowers, Blackfoot Crossing, and Hutterites & History. We welcomed 67 participants on the tours.

Family Programs

Green Acres Kiwanis Club of Lethbridge sponsored the Saturdays at 1 and Summer Family Fun programs again in 2018. This allowed us to continue our level of service for the parents and children attending the programs. This year we welcomed 2,694 participants to 43 programs with an average attendance of 63 participants per program. Topics included rag dolls, needlepoint, flipbook animation, drive in movies, printmaking, and Métis and Blackfoot history. During the winter school break, we repeated five of our top family programs of the year as a special Top 5 of 2017 series. Topics included paper airplanes, sock puppets and watercolour painting. We also continued the First Friday Fun program with 461 participants attending the 8 sessions on topics including bannock, herb gardens and Day of the Dead.

All-ages Community Programs

Our free all-ages community day programs focus on the history and culture of community celebrations including Family Day, Canada Day and our Hallowe’en Spooktacular. We welcomed 1,520 people at these fun events!

Volunteers

Without the help from our volunteers, the Galt Museum & Archives would not be able to run the programs and events at the high standards that we do.

Many different recruitment strategies were used to bring in new volunteers to the Galt program. We had 14 students from the University of Lethbridge and Lethbridge College that were involved in both the Applied Studies program, as well as the internship program. The Galt Museum & Archives had a presence at many volunteer recruitment fairs throughout the city. These included the Volunteer Fair at the University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge College FNMI Days, Volunteer Attract at the Exhibition, and volunteer recruitment fairs held at various local schools.

Marketing

Marketing and communication with our community are key to fulfilling the mission of the Galt Museum & Archives. Communications from the Galt generally centre around upcoming and ongoing programs and events, as well as providing historical articles and links to our exhibits, documents in the archives and items in the collections.

The Marketing and Communications Officer is responsible for designing calendars, posters, banners, advertisements, commercials, invitations, newsletters, and reports; building and maintaining websites; updating social media accounts and online community calendars; and liaising with media contacts, community and tourism partners, VIPs and sponsors, and the travel industry.

A number of projects were completed in 2018, including new standalone websites for Fort Whoop-Up and the Galt’s Education programs. The Education website allows teachers to submit requests for school programs to Museum Educator Ashley Henrickson, while checking an online availability calendar, streamlining the booking process for teachers and for the Museum Educator.

Work began in late 2018 on building a new primary website for the Galt Museum & Archives. This project moved the blog posts that the Galt had been publishing on Blogger since 2008 onto the new primary website. This consolidated the impressive amount of historical and institutional content that had been generated by Galt staff over the past decade onto the main website. The new website is expected to launch in late January of 2019.

Archivist Andrew Chernevych continued his series of Facebook posts highlighting archival photographs and videos. These posts continue to drive a majority of engagement on the Galt’s Facebook page, garnering 19 of the top 20 engaged-with posts this year.

Operations

Operations ensures the smooth operation of visitor services, providing opportunities to enhance exhibits and expand community use of the museum facilIty. These activities and options helped the Galt be a vibrant gathering place for all visitors.

Facility Rentals

Facility Rentals continued emphasizing the Galt as being a vibrant gathering place for community members and visitors. Set-up and staffing arrangements and the coordination of the space with Museum programs and events were crucial to ensuring each occasion ran smoothly. In 2018, we hosted 185 events in our four rentable spaces: 94 bookings for the Viewing Gallery, 55 for the Servus Credit Union Learning Studio, 15 in the Friends Board Room and 21 in the ATCO Centennial Room.

Facility bookings generated $79,995 in gross revenue generated in 2018. These funds stay at the Galt. 11,200 people attended through the paid bookings.

Museum Store

The Museum Store added significant value to the visitor’s experience and sales contributed to the operation of the Galt.

The focus of items in the store was on those that have a historic or cultural link to Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, or to our exhibits. The museum store was recognized as one of the few places to purchase Lethbridge-themed memorabilia and has a selection of local and regional history books.

Front desk staff looked after Annual Pass and ticket sales among a host of other duties. Most Annual Passes are held by local residents. During 2018, members visited the museum 6,064 times.

Special Events

February

The Friends of the Galt hosted the first Friends Winter Barn Dance with the help of the Great Canadian Barn Dance Band. This was a fundraiser for education projects with the Galt Museum. 75 people attended and had a great time dancing away the winter cold.

March and April

We celebrated Easter once again with Eggstravaganza. This year, the theme worked with the exhibit For Keeps. Easter crafts, egg dying, face painting and, of course, a visit from the Easter Bunny were highlights for this annual celebration. 1,020 adults and children participated in this wonderful event. We picked up sponsorship from Farm Credit Canada (title sponsor), TD Canada Trust, Stafford Family Dental and Servus Credit Union.

To celebrate National Volunteer Week, we held our annual Galt Museum Volunteer Appreciation Dinner. We hosted over 80 volunteers, staff and board members. Volunteers and staff visited with one another, and there were door prizes for all that attended the event.

May

In May, we ran our fourth successful fundraiser A Taste of Downtown over two nights. The downtown was divided into two sections, highlighting each section on one of the two nights. We sold over 180 tickets for the combined nights, and had 30 participating businesses combined for both nights. Of these 30 businesses, 10 of them were brand new or coming back after a lengthy absence. As the downtown grows, we continue to grow this event as well.

June

We hosted the first Trader Days at the Fort. This event featured axe and buffalo chip throwing, stories by Andrew Legg, some whisky to sample, smokies and chips, as well as entertainment from Phil Lethbridge, a Métis fiddler. We had a low turnout due to weather, but the people who attended this event left happy. Alvin Reinhard Fritz Architect was a sponsor of this event. We look forward to building this event in future years.

August

The Scenic Plaza Whoop-Up Days BBQ was once again a huge success. We served over 400 people under sunny skies and warm breezes. Funds raised were donated to Lethbridge Food Bank. We partnered with Servus Credit Union, Green Acres Foundation, and Servus Home and Auto Insurance.

September

The popular Beer Tasting Soirée saw over 350 people enjoying tastes of many different beers and wines! The theme this year was “Galt Goes Hollywood,” which saw patrons dress up in their best movie star costumes. Armour Insurance was the title sponsor of this event, and we picked up sponsorship from Melcor Developments, RBC Royal Bank, Pioneer Promotions, TD Canada Trust, MacLachlan McNab Hembroff LLP and Bridge City Chrysler. We were assisted once again by Northside Liquor. Pyramid Entertainment supplied the musical entertainment. It was a wonderful evening of sampling beer provided by 22 vendors and enjoying the night.

October

We hosted the Galt Babies Birthday Party on October 21 this year. This event celebrates those who were born in the Galt Hospital (while it was still a hospital). We saw 200 people attend this wonderful event filled with cake, punch and tours of the building. This event also helps with donations to our annual giving and legacy campaigns.

November

Our VIP party Artifact or Fiction was held on November 27 this year to match up with National Philanthropy Month and Giving Tuesday, both important dates on the fundraising calendar. The event is to recognize our previous year’s donors and major corporate sponsors. The event had 100 people attend, and everyone had a great time guessing which stories were truths or fictions as told by our 5 groups of presenters.

Annual Giving

The Galt Museum once again sent out over 6,000 letters to members and donors for our 2016/2017 annual giving drive in October.

Friends of the Galt

The Friends of the Galt are proud to have reached our eighteenth year supporting the mission of the Galt Museum & Archives. The Friends experienced an active year in 2018. They continued to provide funding support for the Galt’s educational programming through contributing to the cost of bussing elementary school children to and from the Galt, as well as other Galt initiatives.

The Friends hosted the first annual Friends Winter Barn Dance in the Galt’s Viewing Gallery on February 10, 2018. The Great Canadian Barn Dance Band provided the music. Although moderately successful with many happy attendees, the function was not a financial success losing $1,232. However, it was deemed to be enough of a success that the Friends planned to hold a second dance in October 2018 and a third in February 2019. The dance scheduled for October was cancelled due to lack of ticket sales. The Friends were cautiously optimistic about the success of the dance scheduled for February 2019 as 2018 closed.

The Friends of the Galt held a casino event on June 14 and 15, 2018. This raised $32,191.94 to be used over a three-year period to support educational programming at the Galt. The Friends also applied for two grants in 2018. One application was for a $10,000 grant for a Traditional/Local Food Development Coordinator submitted to the Tourism Growth Innovation Fund of the Government of Alberta. The other application was for a $50,225 grant for a Blackfoot Language Revitalization Project 2019–2020 submitted to Canada Heritage.

The Friends continued to support and encourage community participation in the Friends of the Galt Endowment Fund held with the Community Foundation of Lethbridge and Southwestern Alberta. Proceeds from this Fund are managed jointly by the Friends of the Galt and the Galt Museum & Archives Board of Directors. President Glenn Coulter again had the pleasure of representing the Friends as an ex-officio member of the Galt’s Board of Directors.

The Friends would like to thank the many volunteers, staff and board members at the Galt for their assistance in helping the Friends achieve their objectives.

Donors and Sponsors

The Galt is grateful for the support it receives for our programs, events, exhibits and operations by the community. The Galt Museum once again had dozens of donors respond to our annual giving drive in October. We would like to recognize individuals, corporations and organizations for their sponsorship, donations and in-kind support in 2018.