by PAUL RAYNER

The Boissevain Community Archives is looking for increased assistance in recording the rural area for now and the future.

The archives, part of the Boissevain & Morton Regional Library, are in the process of updating their photo survey, a way of recording places in the area as they are in a period of time. In the past, these photo surveys have been conducted in town by the Turtle Mountain Snappers camera club, limited to the businesses in town. They are doing one again, but help is needed for the rural area.

“We need the rural area as well,” explained Brad Peters of the Library.  “Obviously, the farms are farther apart, which may be a heavy project for any volunteer club to do.”

What they are wanting is for the farm owners themselves to do the snapping.

“We’ve thought a while about the best way to do this. We felt the best way was to get the people to help us out.”

They are looking for recent photos of farms, to create a kind of rural time capsule of what farming is like in the Morton and Ninga area in the present.

“We want to show what an agricultural operation looks like in 2009,” Peters explained, “so people can look at it ten years from now and see what people were doing then.”

Participants are to take new photos of their farms, or bring in existing ones if they are recent. The archives wants shots of anything they find notable, but are particularly interested in shots of the house, especially in the case of century farms, wide angle shots of the farmyard, photos with farm equipment and operations and any road signage or decoration, including heritage signs.

The archives can accept either prints or digital copies at the library. If digital, they prefer to have the high-resolution file from the camera on a CD.

The donor will be asked to sign a release form, known as a deed or gift, donating them to the Boissevain Community Archives. When the person making the donation is not the photographer, they will need to know who it is, to verify they have given their permission. This is what makes the photos freely available for research or presentations.

As well as farm photos, the archives are currently looking for shots of notable moments in local history for display purposes. According to archives clerk Clare Littlejohn, this would include photos of the 2007 tornado, or extensive flooding in recent years.

“To echo the whole project, we’re looking for weather stories,” Littlejohn said, adding that the severe storm of 1994, for example, is one where they are severely lacking in information. “We’re just trying to build a record of events.”

She added they have had one farm response so far and some others have shown interest. Peters said they would like as many as they can get - “If possible every operating farm.”

Although not specifically part of this survey, people are more than welcome to donate historical photos on farms or other subjects. As well, history is now. Littlejohn said she would like to see a new aerial photo taken of the Town of Boissevain, as they have been done in the past and there is a need for a more modern one. It is about preserving the past while it is still the present.

“You can bring other things that record events,” she stated. “We want people to document things. Think 50 years down the road, what people will be wanting to know about.”

Is there a possibility the archives will do another survey with donated photographs in the future on another subject?

“After we’re done, maybe we’ll see something different,” Peters said. “We thought this was something we could try and see how it works. If people are into it and it works, if we get a useful number of submissions, maybe we can use the concept and move to other areas.”