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 provided information whenever requested to people looking for data about pioneers who once lived in our area and to others working on books, grants and theses. Most of the time we can help with information needed.

3. We have been 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. Thanks to Judy and Denis Stanley for allowing us these precious newspapers to copy.

4. With the help from a grant from Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance (CBT) ($1000) we purchased a new computer for the office to replace the old one that was ready to collapse. RDCK also helped with a grant of $500. We also bought a computer for the interview room, which has added specialties for copying videos to CD or DVDs. We also now can scan old photos for people and do a copy for them. This was more costly but BC Gaming helped with the funding for this.

5. The little book Halcyon. The Captain's Paradise - was published last year and is selling well at $25 plus $10 for postage/packaging. We received $1000 grant from RDCK and $1000 from CBT's Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance to help with printing costs.

6. Milton Parent, with Bill Barrow's assistance, is working on a little book on the Arrow Lakes River Drive of the 1960s. This was from Revelstoke to Castlegar when tugs transported bundles of logs to the mill. Hopefully, it will be ready to be published soon. We are looking for photos of these tugs doing this work, do you have any?

7. Trips for this year - hopefully - will get to see the big cedar tree on way to Camborne - Nigel will be advising when we will be able to go. Also a trip to the Mennonite settlement and gravesite. Annette Devlin has offered to take us there.

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 20th of April for our AGM from 2-5 p.m. and after a short meeting and election, Greg Nesteroff will be telling the story of miner Eli Carpenter, Bruce Rohn will be bringing in many of his wonderful photos and his collections of boat information. Milton Parent will be showing some edited excerpts from our historical videos.

There will be refreshments.

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.