Galt Museum & Archives

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Who do you want to be?

Don't think I have forgot about my Lethbridge 1906-1913 exhibit that is coming up next April. I just had to put it on hold for the last little while as the school year kept us so busy.

But I have had some progress with the exhibit of late. As some of you may know, I have decided to call the exhibit "The Greatest Years You Never Knew" and the "blurb" I'm using related to marketing will read:

Lethbridge changed forever between 1906 and 1913. These were years of incredible population growth and many new businesses and industries made Lethbridge home. It was a time of wild optimism as fortunes were made. In many ways, these were the greatest years in Lethbridge history and were vital in shaping the Lethbridge we know today.

But not everyone shared in the good times. For many people these greatest years never happened. Experience the boom and bust, joy and despair of the lives of Lethbridge residents in The Greatest Years You Never Knew.

At present what I'm thinking (and who knows how far this will go) is that when you come to the exhibit you will be given an identity card and you will have to find out whether, for your person, they were great years or whether or not that person experienced the bust part of the years. At present we're researching who some of the identities will be but I'm certainly hoping to represent many of the different people you might have met in Lethbridge in that time period. And then you'll have an opportunity to see life from their perspective.

I'm also think that it might be interesting to have two different entrances to the exhibit and depending on who you have will determine what entrance you get to use. One of the difficulties I'm facing, of course, is that we don't have a lot of in-depth experience on certain ethnic groups from that time period. Can I find enough information to make this idea work? Can these identities be an amalgamation of several individuals?

I also want to use as many of the different senses as I can during this exhibit and want to include some music. I have found what songs were sung in 1906 at the opening of Westminster School. I have been able to find lyrics for two of the songs but have had no luck with the song titled "Red, White and Blue." Needless to say, every time I search for the song, I find the American versions (not the Canadian/British). If anyone has any idea where to find lyrics for this song, I would greatly appreciate it.