Galt Volunteer Earns Award from Governor General

Galt Museum & Archives at sunset.
Photo by Galt Museum & Archives.

The Lethbridge Herald has been the newspaper of record in southern Alberta for the last 116 years. The articles and images shared in the pages of the Herald are an incredible chronicle of our community. These pictures were captured on a daily basis by some of the best photojournalists in our region, including Orville Brunelle, Lloyd Knight, David Rossiter and Ian Martens. In the 1970s, Lethbridge Herald staff entrusted their extensive collection of negative images to the Galt's archives, with more subsequent donations. 

"The collection of images from the Lethbridge Herald is one of the most diverse and most used community resources at the Galt," says Archivist Andrew Chernevych. "Making these photographs available to the public and researchers has been one of the largest and longest projects in the archives. The project began around 16 years ago and has already taken nearly 200,000 hours to complete to this stage. The work that goes into scanning the images, documenting them, and making them available on our public database is a huge investment, but one that benefits the entire community."

Volunteers are the key to many projects at the Galt. Thousands of volunteer hours have been invested in this project over sixteen years. Every year, volunteers donate a tremendous amount of time and skill to the museum. These dedicated community members put on community programs for all ages, share stories and preserve the region's history in the archives and collections. 

The Governor General of Canada recently awarded one volunteer at the Galt with the prestigious Sovereign's Medal for Volunteers for their dedication in digitizing the Lethbridge Herald collection in the archives. "Jim Boychuk been steadfastly scanning this vast collection for the past sixteen years," says Chernevych. "His contribution to local history and the community at large cannot be understated. Jim has donated around 200,000 hours to this project on a near-daily basis. He is responsible for scanning hundreds of thousands of images that are now available for the public to access online on our searchable database." 

The images from the Lethbridge Herald make up the backbone of the historical photographs available on the Galt's public database. You can find all the images that Jim has scanned at collections.galtmuseum.com