Dear Member:

We wish to extend to all of you a good New Year! and hope that you are keeping well.

1. Archives office at BC Hydro building. We are working hard at our downtown office and have once again received help with funding from the BC Gaming Commission to help us pay for operating costs and some supplies. Our taxes have been forgiven by the Village the last few years, which lightens the load considerably. However, insurance has increased tremendously and we now pay $900 per year.

2. We have worked hard to provide information whenever requested to people looking for data about pioneers who once lived in our area and to others working on books, grants etc. The most interesting this past year was when contacted by Knowledge Network for help with a BC Moments program on five hot springs of the area - including Nakusp and Halcyon Hot Springs.

3. We have started copying the 1970s and 1980s Arrow Lakes newspapers because we are receiving requests for this time period now. This is a big job and after copying the papers, they must be cut up and put into looseleafs into categories to make the information easy to find.

4. With the help from a grant from Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance (CBT) and BC Gaming, we managed to buy about $2000 worth of acid free supplies and tapes.

5. The little book Halcyon. The Captain's Paradise - is at the printers and should be ready for sale by June. It will cost $25 each - add $10 for postage if it needs to be mailed.

6. Our other books are selling well and because of that we were able to print this new book and reprint Silent Shores and Sunken Ships last year.

7. We are hoping to go to some local fire lookouts this year for some of our trips. Also trying to get enough boats together to take us to Arrowhead again - this time by water. Can anyone help with this?

8. We had a 20th Anniversary Open House at the archives in December and were pleased to see new people visit the premises.


Lastly, we hope that you will keep up your membership with our Society. To receive help from BC Gaming, we have to show that we have enough people interested in keeping our society going through memberships. We would have to close the office or stop printing books, if we lost this help with our office costs.

We decided to rent the Seniors hall on the 13th of April for our AGM from 1-5 p.m. and after the meeting and election, we will be showing some slides that Jean Spicer took in the 1960s - as well as others that you might be interested in seeing. We will also take some archival items along to show or photographs. There will be coffee, tea and cookies as well.

Don't forget that we have books that you can borrow in the Della Parent Research Library, old special books that you can see only at the office in the Edna Daney Special Collections. There are many artifacts we would be pleased to show you from the Bessie Vaughan Originals Room and we would like to update your family information that we keep in the Bob Swigart Newspaper Files.

If you have not been to our archives office for a visit and/or to check on your family information, we would be happy to see you. If you have any archive items or information that you would like to donate to the archives, we would appreciate receiving them.

Memberships are - $5 per year.

Life Memberships are $50.

Meetings are held at our office during the day 2:30 p.m. - monthly - 3rd Thursdays.