Among the bruised and battered in the flooded town of High River, Alta., is the community’s museum with an extensive collection of western history and artifacts.
“We lost about 80 percent of our collection,” said curator Irene Kerr.
The Museum of the Highwood is in a 100-year-old building located in the downtown area. It had an extensive collection of more than 30,000 photographs, historical research materials and archives. These sustained minimal damage, but other artifacts are in ruins.
“Our photos are probably the least of our worries, but we lost most of our negatives,” she said.
Read Also
Ag In Motion 2025 site hub of activity
day before Ag in Motion preview.
For example, negatives from the High River Times were lost, but the newspaper also had microfilm of its material so some history was preserved.
Museum staff had about 20 minutes to vacate the site when the flood waters swept through the town June 20. There was no time to save anything, said Kerr.
They were preparing a new exhibit that included wedding dresses. Much of the textile collection in storage has been lost.
“A lot of them got mould and a lot of them just disintegrated in the muck,” she said.
Like many museums, large parts of collections are kept in storage. Items in the basement were lost when that area was filled with three metres of water.
Residents and business owners were not allowed to return for a couple weeks so the collections sat for 10 days in dirty water and grew mould.
Staff returned to find ruined books, shelves fallen over and an antique piano tipped upside down. It would have cost $20,000 to restore the piano, which is more than the museum can afford.
Other antique wooden furniture was also ruined.
Staff salvaged as much as possible, then cleaned and disinfected items and put them in a refrigerator truck.
“We had 17 saddles that got a lot of mould on them. We washed them off and they are now in a freezer truck,” Kerr said.
The building is drying out slowly to prevent warping and other damage.
The museum is also considering new storage facilities to protect the surviving collection for the next time such a disaster strikes.
