Revelstoke railfans and history buffs will be treated to two presentations by acclaimed Okanagan archivist Brian Wilson during Railway Days 2011.
The Penticton-based archivist is the executive director with the Okanagan Archive Trust Society (www.oldphotos.ca), an organization that seeks to bring together the works of the Okanagan’s most prolific photographers to preserve over a century’s worth of heritage from the region and beyond.
He’s coming here to help assess a newly donated collection of photographs at the Revelstoke Railway Museum and is throwing the presentations in as a bonus to those interested in archiving and local history in general.
Wilson’s 35 years of archival work focuses on the Okanagan, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a wealth of knowledge about history from outside that region.
In a telephone interview he told me that famous Revelstoke ski jumper Nels Nelsen led a promotional team through the south Okanagan on an Olympics fundraising tour in the 1930s, where he set a world record in Penticton. And Wilson has the photo to prove it.
Wilson said archives and local history are especially important to towns like Revelstoke that are in the midst of change. In Penticton, the local agricultural economy is transitioning from a fruit orchard-based economy to vineyards. Did I know, he asked, that orcharding itself was in fact an afterthought following the gold rush?
Newcomers to his town, said Wilson, actively seek out a historical understanding of their new surroundings. “Everybody is interested in background history,” he said. “I’m kind of the history welcome wagon.”
Likewise, grumblings that Revelstoke is losing its roots by seeking the ski resort limelight arguably ignores that Revelstoke has always had active ambitions to be recognized on the international stage as a world-class ski destination. This includes the ski jumping Tournament of Champions era from 1950 to 1974, when Revelstoke was a centre for international ski-jumping competitions.
While in Revelstoke, Wilson will be archiving a newly acquired Jack Leslie collection.
Revelstoke Railway Museum executive director Jennifer Dunkerson said the near-complete collection of train photographs were donated to the museum by Leslie, a volunteer with the museum. He served on their board of directors and also with the museum’s model railway club.
Revelstoke’s Jill Leslie said her late husband Jack’s collection of train photographs was a passion that started in his childhood and continued until he passed away at the age of 64 in 2007. He converted his love of trains into a career, serving as a CP Rail employee in Revelstoke, where he served in many positions, including Chief Clerk at the yard office.
“It was a very big passion of his,” Jill said. “I don’t think too many people really know the extent of it.” He networked and traded with collectors from across the province to create a “near perfect” collection of photos of the engines that defined rail travel in B.C.
While in town, Wilson will catalogue and assess the collection, adding a new chapter of historical knowledge into the public realm.
Wilson’s first Railway Days presentation is called, What will still be around 100 years from now? It explores the use of digital and analog media in preserving historical documents such as photographs. Wilson said the digital realm is fraught with problems, including corrupted files and resolution issues that can mean archives risk degraded quality or losing images altogether.
He noted he can still make near-perfect prints of century-old original photographic negatives in a resolution that rivals modern professional digital cameras. Transferring to digital can lead to significant degradation that can lose “that custom verve of what he saw at the time,” said Wilson. “That in itself is an insult to the photographer.”
The presentation will include practical tips on preserving your archives properly.
It is from 1–1:30 p.m. at the Revelstoke Railway Museum on Saturday, Aug. 13.
His second presentation is entitled The Digital Realm of Archiving.
He will be exploring technology and the philosophy of archiving. “The philosophy is that public information needs to be public,” Wilson said, adding modern archiving is leading a push to see local archives transferred to libraries where they can be accessed for free. That presentation is on Sunday, Aug. 14 from 1–1:30 p.m. at the Revelstoke Railway Museum.
