PR 132/02 Diary of Mrs Walter Burgess (nee Mary Johnston Hastie), Oct 1907- Sept 1908

Click here to view the diary images: https://www.flickr.com/photos/oakbayarchives/albums/72177720310105593

Transcripts are gradually appearing in the description for each image. To participate in the transcription project, please leave your transcription or editing suggestions in the comment box for the image transcribed, or email to archives@oakbay.ca

Transcription conventions:

• transcribe one line of diary text per line of transcript. This makes it easier for editors and readers to compare the two.
• leave punctuation and spelling as they are in the original. [Square brackets] are the signal that something is deliberately written differently from exactly what is in the original.
• a caret ^ indicates that the following word (usually only one) is inserted above or below the line
• If you feel that a misspelling makes comprehension difficult, insert the conventional spelling following the transcribed word [in square brackets], e.g. bussy [busy]
• If a letter or word is illegible to you, transcribe as [1 illegible word] or [mo _ _ _ ng]
• If you are unsure of a word, transcribe in square brackets preceded by a question mark, e.g. [?ironing]
• Turn off your speling and punctuationo autocreect!

It’s been an eventful month!

New display: Marion Cumming’s local history books are on the reference library shelves, her cuttings collections for the reference files are listed, and a sample is on display in the foyer at MH.

News: The Archives are open to researchers in person by appointment 9.30-4 Tuesdays and Fridays. There have been a lot of meetings and lots of work on finalizing the volunteer program documentation, but to my great relief, archives volunteers will be starting back on site next week. I only received 7 enquiries in June (good weather maybe?) but the year’s total is 88 so far, on par with last year’s pace.

Volunteers will return and drop-in hours will start on Tuesday 18 July. Tuesdays 10-1 will be a regular drop-in time - no appointment needed for that period, but because our space is smaller these days, with 2 volunteers and the archivist there, we will reach our working capacity of 4 pretty quickly, so appointments are not a bad idea! We are planning to have another drop-in session on Fridays, pending further volunteer availability.

How do I access the archives? The most direct (and step-free) route is via the east side entrance (Fairway side) on the ground floor of Municipal Hall; ring the buzzer marked Archives. If you are already in the main foyer upstairs during Archives drop-in hours, ask reception staff to call the Archives, and the archivist or a volunteer will meet you at the bottom of the internal stairs from the foyer.

The archives space in Municipal Hall hasn't moved, but it has changed shape and size since the MH renovations in 2021 - here's a photo tour of the revised space.

Questions or appointment requests? Please get in touch!

Website: https://www.oakbay.ca/archives

Photo Search: https://www.oakbay.ca/archives/photographs

Blog posts: https://connect.oakbay.ca/archives

Email: archives@oakbay.ca

Phone: 250-598-3290

- Post by Anna Sander, 14 July 2023.

To cite: Sander, Anna. (2023, July). 'June in the Archives.' [Blog post]. District of Oak Bay, Archives. Retrieved from https://connect.oakbay.ca/admin/projects/archives/news_feed/june-in-the-archives [date accessed].

The Archives are open to visitors & researchers in person by appointment in advance during staffed hours, normally on Tuesdays and Fridays 9:30 a.m.-4:00 p.m. Drop-in hours are Tuesdays 10-1. Enquiries are also welcome any time by email, phone and post. For all archives enquiries and appointment requests:

Email: archives@oakbay.ca
Tel: 250-598-3290 (please include an email address in your message if possible)
Oak Bay Archives
2167 Oak Bay Avenue
Victoria, British Columbia V8R 1G2

January-February update from the Archivist:

Started meeting regularly with Archives Liaison Cllr Watson

Virtual class visit with the Grade Fours at GNS, for the third year :)

Met online with HF members re continuing the series of photos documenting Oak Bay properties slated for demolition or moving, parallel to the District's Building & Planning dept demolition files. Very useful meeting for working out some of the background and work flow of the project; more followup correspondence to come, working out logistics of image file storage and continuing with digital photos instead of previous print version.

Staff are now preparing for the first stage in restarting in-person Archives visits, i.e. bringing Archives volunteers back on site - we will be meeting with current volunteers for feedback and discussion next month. This means I'm working on drafts-for-feedback of a full revision of the volunteers handbook (last version 2013!) and additional policy & procedure documents, project descriptions etc .

In between those things and fielding enquiries (36 so far, in line with 2021 and 2022), I've been arranging, describing and digitizing several small previously unprocessed collections of mostly photos, and uploading draft fonds descriptions to MemoryBC.

as reported to the Heritage Foundation, 14 February 2023.

=========================

Questions? Please get in touch!

Website: https://www.oakbay.ca/archives(External link)

Photo Search: https://www.oakbay.ca/archives/photographs(External link)

Blog posts: https://connect.oakbay.ca/archives

Email: archives@oakbay.ca(External link)

Phone: 250-598-3290

- Post by Anna Sander, 14 February 2023.

To cite: Sander, Anna. (2023, February). 'January-February in the Archives.' [Blog post]. District of Oak Bay, Archives. Retrieved from https://connect.oakbay.ca/admin/projects/archives/news_feed/january-february-in-the-archives [date accessed].

March update from the Archivist:

• In preparation for reopening, I’ve been doing a lot of work drafting a framework for the archives volunteer program. Next week the Director and Deputy Director of Corporate Services, the Archives council liaison and I will meet with the existing group of archives volunteers, to discuss volunteers starting to return to work on site in the archives, and what our future in the archives could look like. That’s really occupying all my time other than
• answering enquiries (now approaching 60 for the year).
• You may have noticed a certain ‘Tea With’ article in the spring Tweed magazine! It was nice to be invited by the editor back in January, and while press interviews are not a standard thing for municipal staff, this one was a good way to introduce what would normally be my rather more public-facing face, and get some information about the archives out into the community.

as reported to the Heritage Foundation, 11 April 2023.

=========================

Questions? Please get in touch!

Website: https://www.oakbay.ca/archives

Photo Search: https://www.oakbay.ca/archives/photographs

Blog posts: https://connect.oakbay.ca/archives

Email: archives@oakbay.ca

Phone: 250-598-3290

- Post by Anna Sander, 11 April 2023.

To cite: Sander, Anna. (2023, April). 'March in the Archives.' [Blog post]. District of Oak Bay, Archives. Retrieved from https://connect.oakbay.ca/admin/projects/archives/news_feed/march-in-the-archives [date accessed].

May update from the Archivist:

• work continues to prepare for volunteers' return
• 80 enquiries received (and answered) so far this year
• received the donation of books and papers for the archives reference files and library from Marion Cumming's estate. The books are already in the archives' online library catalogue https://www.librarything.com/catalog/OakBayArchives and will feature in the next MH foyer display

as reported to the Heritage Foundation, 13 June 2023.

=========================

Questions? Please get in touch!

Website: https://www.oakbay.ca/archives

Photo Search: https://www.oakbay.ca/archives/photographs

Blog posts: https://connect.oakbay.ca/archives

Email: archives@oakbay.ca

Phone: 250-598-3290

- Post by Anna Sander, 13 June 2023.

To cite: Sander, Anna. (2023, June). 'May in the Archives.' [Blog post]. District of Oak Bay, Archives. Retrieved from https://connect.oakbay.ca/admin/projects/archives/news_feed/may-in-the-archives [date accessed].

April update from the Archivist:

• passed 70 enquiries for the year, very similar pace to 2022 and 2021
• new display in MH foyer and online about using digitized historic city directories for local history research
• a good meeting in late April with current Archives volunteers, Director and Deputy Director of Corporate Services (i.e. municipal clerk), Cllr Watson (Archives Liaison)
• continuing to prepare policy and procedure documents for the return of volunteers to work on site, and eventual opening to members of the public wishing to do research.

as reported to the Heritage Foundation, 9 May 2023.

=========================

Questions? Please get in touch!

Website: https://www.oakbay.ca/archives

Photo Search: https://www.oakbay.ca/archives/photographs

Blog posts: https://connect.oakbay.ca/archives

Email: archives@oakbay.ca

Phone: 250-598-3290

- Post by Anna Sander, 9 May 2023.

To cite: Sander, Anna. (2023, May). 'April in the Archives.' [Blog post]. District of Oak Bay, Archives. Retrieved from https://connect.oakbay.ca/admin/projects/archives/news_feed/april-in-the-archives [date accessed].

Historic city directories as a research resource for house, local, and family history: not just names and telephone numbers!

Many of the directories are online for the years 1860-1955: https://bccd.vpl.ca/

Image caption: Advertisement for the Union Hotel, from the First Victoria Directory https://bccd.vpl.ca/title/1860/First_Victoria_Directory.html

"This House is now conducted on the same principle as the "What Cheer House" of San Francisco. Board, per day $1.00. Rooms at $1 and $2 per week. Wash and Bath Room; also, a Select Private Reading Room with a Library of choice Books, Atlantic, European and California Newspapers."

Vancouver Public Library’s online collection of digitized British Columbia city directories dates from 1860 up to and including 1955. The directories contain detailed historical information about communities throughout the province, including:

• listings of individuals and businesses in Vancouver and Victoria (sometimes other communities as well, depending on the directory), indexed by name and by street
• population figures
• government listings
• operating newspapers
• schools and libraries .

Updated regularly, the directories document the growth, development and progress of British Columbia over the years.

You can use the directories to track the history of streets, communities and individual homes, find your ancestors, and research the history of companies and institutions.

Depending on the period and the directory, you may be able to find out:

• whether the occupant of a property was the owner or a renter
• the volume of different kinds of fish caught in BC in a given year
• individuals' occupations/employers/work places
• how many staff were in the local police or fire departments
• which houses in a street were vacant, new, or under construction in that year
• a street's former name

and many other kinds of information. The advertisements and illustrations also provide insight into the social norms, fashions and attitudes prevailing throughout the period.

– from https://bccd.vpl.ca/, adapted & edited

Image caption: "This Little Library Can Answer 945,000,000 Questions." Advertisement for directory reference libraries, once found across the US and Canada, located within e.g. Chambers of Commerce or public libraries. Nowadays, many historic directories have been digitized and are available online; local archives are often a good source of the hard copy volumes. - Image from a Wrigley Directory.

To avoid overwhelm at the thought of those 945 billion questions, this post will concentrate on navigating some promises and pitfalls of the street indexes, which continue in the city directories held in hard copy at Oak Bay Archives up to 1998. After that we have BC Tel/Telus/CanPages telephone directories for most years to 2016, but with increasing numbers of people choosing to go ex-directory (delisted), and directories indexing by name only, these are not nearly as comprehensive, or in certain ways as useful, as the city directories.

Image caption: The first listing of Oak Bay Avenue in the streets index, Williams' Directory, 1894.

NB! The order of listing properties on a street may change over time or according to different directory publishers. In this example, the north side is listed first, west to east, from Cadboro Bay Road (Fort) to Oak Bay, by which they mean the body of water, i.e. the eastern end of Oak Bay Avenue. Then the south side is listed *in the other direction*, east to west. This isn't explicit, and isn't obvious from street numbers, which weren't used yet - it has to be understood from the sequence of cross streets, which also often helps to sort out street name changes.

Remember that west of Foul Bay Road, Oak Bay Avenue is not in the municipality of Oak Bay! It's part of the City of Victoria, so this list from viHistory may be a useful shortcut - but not always. The first cross street listed on Oak Bay Ave is Hurlton Street, which we don't know by that name today. See Fire Insurance plans vol 2 (below) for the solution - Hurlton is now Redfern St. It's sometimes on maps as Hulton rather than Hurlton.

Beware inconsistent/changing formats in directory listings over time, and missing sections! Compare entries for Hampshire Road in 1900, 1910 and 1920:

Image caption: 1900 Henderson's Directory entry for "Hampshire Road, off Oak Bay Ave". There's no indication here of whether this is north or south of Oak Bay Avenue - for that we need to look at a year with more development on Hampshire and therefore detail in the directory.

(Where possible, we should also cross-check with a different source - here's the entry for the William Henry Noble House in the National Register of Historic Places, which gives a clue.)

Image caption: 1910 Henderson's Directory entry for "from 2250 Oak Bay Ave to Cranmore Road". South of the Avenue is only Noble's farm, while the intervening decade has seen considerable building on Hampshire (both sides, odd and even numbers) immediately north of Oak Bay Avenue. For the history of this section of Hampshire, known as Junction Road, see Gary Wilcox's account here. But as we follow Hampshire north of the Avenue, this raises another question: "Jolimont" at what is now 1936 Hampshire was already there, long since built in 1892, just north of Cranmore. When and how is it listed? That will have to be the subject of another post...

Image caption: 1920 Henderson's Directory entry for "from Central Avenue to 2200 Oak Bay Avenue". This list shows the development south of the Avenue in the 20 years since the sole entry for Noble's Farm. But where is the listing for Hampshire north of Cranmore? It's not present in the 1921 directory either. Let's check for a known cross street's own listing: Cranmore. The cross-street listing in Cranmore Road's entry reveals that Hampshire Road north of Oak Bay Avenue is separately named as... North Hampshire, under N. Wilcox above notes the sequence of name changes for this section of what now is all Hampshire, but we have to keep this in mind when using the contemporary directories too.

False Friends: The Case of the Disappearing Orchard

- a worked example of historical detective work based on information from the digitized city directories and other core sources.

As we have already seen, many streets' names have changed over the decades, and many names occur multiple times in different municipalities (and occasionally in the same one), sometimes during the same period. Directory descriptions (often) help to clarify which is referred to. For instance: let’s trace the history of Orchard Avenue in south Oak Bay, starting in the 1899-1900 directory.

It's a small street, only about a dozen houses long, so that should be straightforward… but we immediately hit a bump: the only Orchard listed in the street index is described as extending “from Government to Oak Bay Ave”. There are only two addresses listed on this street, both industrial businesses (a sash & door company and an iron works). This is definitely not the Orchard Avenue we are thinking of! So where is that Orchard, and what’s this one?

Let’s use the door factory as the focus of our fact-finding. From the names index of the 1899 directory we find the description

"Lemon, Gonasson & Co., Capital Planing Mills, Sash, Mantles, Band-Sawing, Doors, Moldings, Turning &c. Orchard, near Government, Rock Bay." In the 1899 directory, street numbers aren’t used here yet – but we know they eventually were. Did Lemon Gonasson & Co stay at the same address long enough to acquire a street address? If so, we’ll find out the 100-block of Orchard in relation to Government. They did, and the 1913 directory does give us an address with a number: 2324 Government.

Lemon Gonasson are still at the same address, 2324 Government, in 1925. But despite Lemon Gonasson retaining it as part of their Government St address, Orchard St in Rock Bay is no longer listed in the streets index as of the 1914 directories. Meanwhile, Orchard Avenue in south Oak Bay has appeared.

The viHistory list at

https://hcmc.uvic.ca/~taprhist/content/documents/streetname_changes.php

lists many streets’ former names, but doesn’t include this one.

Again, a helpful feature of the street indexes is the inclusion of cross streets. The Government St entry in 1914 shows the location of Lemon Gonasson at the corner of Orchard, which runs parallel to and between Queens and Bay, and has one end at Government.

Note, though, that Orchard is listed as a cross street in the Tregillus-Thompson directory but not in the Henderson's. When in doubt, and where alternates are available, cross-check.

The 1899 directory states that it ran from Government to Oak Bay Avenue, but it certainly doesn’t now. So what happened to it? The cross streets give us a sufficiently specific location to start looking at maps.

The 1911-16 Fire Insurance Plan makes it clear:

[Image shows a section of the 1911-16 Fire Insurance Plan, detail centred on the intersection of Government & Bay Streets in Victoria. The map has been modified to highlight Orchard Street in blue.] Orchard was a small street in two sections, running between and parallel to Queens, just as we expected, from 1) Railroad Ave to Douglas and 2) Government to Rock Bay Avenue. Earlier maps show only the western section, and I haven't tried to find out when it first appears - well outwith my Oak Bay bailiwick. The eastern piece of Orchard Street survives today as Field Street, at the back of the Armouries.

Conclusion: “Oak Bay Ave” in the 1899 directory is a mistake for “Rock Bay Ave”.

Image caption: Detail showing Orchard St in Rock Bay, highlighting added. University of Victoria Fire Insurance Maps Collection. Vol.1 p.3. Page 19 shows even more detail of the Lemon Gonasson premises.

https://vault.library.uvic.ca/concern/generic_works/fd82fe38-5b56-4ce5-aea9-eb0781fa5570?locale=en

To close with some more illustrated ads from the directories,

Image caption: a selection of ads from the side bars of city directories, 1920s-1930s.

=========================

Questions? Please get in touch!

Website: https://www.oakbay.ca/archives

Photo Search: https://www.oakbay.ca/archives/photographs

Blog posts: https://connect.oakbay.ca/archives

Email: archives@oakbay.ca

Phone: 250-598-3290

- Post by Anna Sander, 5 May 2023.

To cite: Sander, Anna. (2023, May). 'City directories as research resources: Municipal Hall foyer display spring 2023.' [Blog post]. District of Oak Bay, Archives. Retrieved from https://connect.oakbay.ca/admin/projects/archives/news_feed/city-directories-as-research-resources-municipal-hall-foyer-display-spring-2023 [date accessed].

Some highlights from 17.5 hours/week in another unusual year at Oak Bay Archives:

January

• 25 enquiries
• virtual visit to GNS Grade 4
• digitizing a large collection of film and glass photograph negatives from 2017 .

February

• This January there were 25 enquiries to the Archives which is double the monthly average from last year.
• continuing work on several hundred individual film negatives and glass plates from the 1900’s to 1920’s. Bertram Howell (1877-1972), formerly of Marrion St., was an Oak Bay electrician and prolific photographer. When he went into care, his household items and contents were auctioned off; several decades, later this part of his photographic work came to the archives.

March 2022

• There were 18 enquiries in February to the Archives.
• digitization of the Bertram Howell (1877-1972) photos is complete. In all there are 550 items, mostly negatives, with an estimated 1300 images in total.
• A selection of the photos are now in the foyer of the Municipal Hall and fall into 4 main themes: WW1 First Canadian Forestry Corp; a few of Victoria and Oak Bay; early electric power generators, and; living in Portland 1905-1911.

April 2022

• #Archive 30 tweets throughout April based on Bert Howell’s photo collection – will be blogged on Connect as well
• the May foyer display/Twitter series/Connect blog article will be “Then & Now” photos of the commercial block of OB Ave, tying in with both

• May’s #Explore Your Archive theme on Twitter https://twitter.com/explorearchives and

• a request from Willows School for a walking tour activity based on OB Ave.
• AABC membership renewed, entering more of the personal/family collections on Memory BC

• Revising house history research document for new homeowners – mayor request
• Ditto for Heritage Commission new members’ orientation package
• Ditto research guide leaflet for Heritage Foundation table at Night Markets
• Which also means updating the website
• 15 boxes are on their way from storage, to review and probably accession and process
• More top level descriptions entered on MemoryBC
• Enquiries, changes to photo captions, street names history page

May 2022

• Continuing to work on the “Then and Now” photos of the commercial block of OB Ave. There have been a lot of changes!
  Archives house history leaflet and copy of building permits index printed and shared with OBHF for their stand at summer Night Markets.
• 13 enquiries received and answered
• Oak Bay Avenue Then and Now display in the Municipal Hall foyer and supplementary walking guide created for Willows School
• Building permits index binder and info sheets created for Foundation table at Night Markets
  Oak Bay village building & occupancy history underway

(Looking ahead to summer projects:(

• (Connect posts, tweets lined up for #MARBLEDMONDAY and #EYAROYAL
• Appraising 18 bankers’ boxes of mixed Foundation and Commission records
• With HR and Corporate Services staff, drafting policy & procedure for return of Archives Volunteers
• Continuing Oak Bay Avenue village core history research with volunteers
• Municipal Hall foyer displays: RR Taylor; Judging a Book By its Cover; Spotlight on Maps)

June 2022

• RR Taylor album: finishing digitizing and starting biog background research for introduction & captions
• Volunteers: good Zoom meeting yesterday, bulletin #43 going out today – we’ll meet in person outdoors next month
• New accession: received new Hilda Wharf (d.2014) collection, mainly photos, fortunately most with identifications and some contextual papers. Hilda was a local music teacher, her husband Norman (d.1990) worked for the provincial govt and survived being shot down & German POW camp in WW2.
• Digitization: quality checking and file naming building permit and old appraisal card photos (several thousand of them, taken ahead of last year’s reno for work-from-home reference), for Archives use and access copies for Building & Planning.
• Outreach: lining up July tweets for Explore Your Archives theme of Sport – we have lots of sport photos so that should be a good one. The summer foyer display & Connect post will also be on this theme.
• Other June-July Connect posts: a research feature on Olive Bunting, later Munro, Clerk/Bookkeeper at Oak Bay municipal offices 1915-21; highlights of a surprising array of marbled endpapers encountered in historic corporate ledgers; and a complete (I hope) list of the principals of Oak Bay High School.

August 2022

• August was divided into two parts, both containing the word appraisal. First, finishing the digitization of all 1800+ photos from the incomplete series of ‘long appraisal cards’ (old Finance records) and uploading them. They’re now online at https://www.flickr.com/photos/oakbayarchives/albums/72177720301021359.
• Second, records appraisal: after sorting and listing the Heritage Foundation and Commission/Advisory Panel/Committee records, I started examining several batches of boxes of municipal records, including public works records detailing the work and wages for the municipal horses 1906-1912 - definitely keeping those!
• Digitization: file naming of building permit and old appraisal card photos (municipal Finance dept) continues; 500/1800 house photos from appraisal cards (1950s-1970s) are online so far at https://www.flickr.com/photos/oakbayarchives/ In some cases these may be the only historic photo available to current home owners; in others, the only surviving photo of a house no longer standing. As a group, they also include information about urban trees, a lot of incidental period detail, especially cars, and glimpses of daily life in the Oak Bay streetscape, including mailmen, window washers, children, and dogs. When upload is complete, this series will more than double OBA’s online photo total – cf. 1315 already available at https://www.oakbay.ca/archives/photographs
• Outreach: August’s Explore Your Archives theme is Animals - again lots to choose from in OBA photos from family collections, ranging from household pets to commercial dairy goats. Horses and ponies are particularly evident in many roles from leisure riding to professional racing, milk delivery and municipal works carts. Several OBA volunteers are working from home on the OB village building history project. I also have a current MLIS student and a recent graduate working on remote volunteer projects.

September 2022

• working through 3 boxes of municipal records 1906-1912, ordinary departmental stuff that I’ll keep as a rare glimpse into what was actually going on, since council minutes are pretty sparing of detail and it’s particularly interesting to see details of the first years of the municipality. So far my favourite file is public works records detailing the work and wages for the municipal horses!
• Sarah (Deputy Director of Corporate Services) and I had a fun afternoon looking through 8 (9?) boxes of badly water damaged, very mouldy 1930s admin records, outdoors last week. I photographed one thin file since there are associated community records in the archives. Otherwise we concluded that the contents were both informationally routine and damaged enough not to be worth attempting to restore, especially because they were from isolated single years. Files were listed and contents will be destroyed.

Looking ahead into September, records appraisal continues, and the records destined for the archives will be listed and rehoused in archival boxes for permanent retention. I’ve just started a CPD course on Managing Archival Photographs, provided by the AABC: https://aabc.ca/Managing-Archival-Photographs In 20 years of managing archives, this is the first time I’ve had the opportunity to learn specifically about this particularly interesting, challenging, diverse and ubiquitous group of formats. The course textbook is excellent; I was able to get a secondhand copy, now part of the archives’ reference library.

September - October

A large chunk of my time was spent listing and sorting Heritage Foundation records and publications for custody transfer to the Foundation. These boxes and objects had been in a large 'general storage' room in the lower floor at Municipal Hall, and since Foundation members were not able to come in and remove them before the renovations, I packed them up and marked them to come back to the Archives so that amongst a move of several thousands of boxes of records, a designated person was looking out for them. There is no longer storage space in Municipal Hall for community organizations' records. Why was I spending time on this? The histories of what are now the Heritage Commission and the Heritage Foundation are closely related, and so are the records, but the Commission is a body of Council while the Foundation is a community organization. It was important to distinguish one from the other so that Commission records could be retained by the District and Foundation records could be released to the Foundation.

October-November 2022

• Records appraisal of transferred administrative series continues.
• 50 new archive boxes have arrived from Hollinger MetalEdge, to 1) house unboxed collections, 2) replace non-archival boxes, 3) eventually replace all 'bankers' box size' boxes holding standard size files
• in the final stretch of CPD module by AABC, Managing Archival Photographs – really useful course, filling some specialist gaps in my own training and also fuelling creation of procedures manual/future training outlines for staff and volunteers
• making historic District files routinely available to departmental staff: short appraisal cards (active 1940s-1970s), long appraisal cards (active 1940s-1970s), building permit books (1942-65 so far). More than 19,000 image files and an index.

December

• Preparing for both year-end and a visit next week with the Mayor and Coun Watson, the new Archives liaison
• working out a complex/confusing family tree in order to put the right captions on the newly digitized photos at https://www.flickr.com/photos/oakbayarchives/collections/72157721320070277/ and choosing some of them for
• one more display upstairs, transport theme because there are pics of several great old cars - notably being driven by women - the unpaved Malahat, AND (probably?) the horse-drawn Oak Bay garbage wagon!

Enquiries total: 138 (143 in 2021)

Blog posts: 14

Tweets: total 70K impressions (views)

Volunteer e-bulletins: 8

Volunteer Zoom chats: 4 + 2 outdoor in-person meetings

Summary

The numbers show a change in emphasis in my work from last year to this; while I was away from the collections for half of 2021, I had more time to undertake training modules, connect with volunteers and feature already-digitized images via social media. 2022 has been my first full calendar year working on site *and* without preparation for and aftermath of a major move to deal with. This has meant I could get my teeth into some basics that weren't possible last year, especially new digitization of photographs, new preliminary box listing of collections, and replacing regular cardboard bankers' boxes with archival acid-free ones half the size.

Still true:

1. I have yet to work a day resembling 'formerly normal' conditions in the archives
2. I have been in post for the full time equivalent of 16 months
3. the large and experienced team of archives volunteers have not been able to work with me on site yet
4. learning new things every day means you know more things every day

- Anna Sander, February 2023

=========================

Questions? Please get in touch!

Website: https://www.oakbay.ca/archives

Photo Search: https://www.oakbay.ca/archives/photographs

Blog posts: https://connect.oakbay.ca/archives

Email: archives@oakbay.ca(

Phone: 250-598-3290

- Post by Anna Sander, February 2023.

To cite: Sander, Anna. (2023, February). '2022 in review.' [Blog post]. District of Oak Bay, Archives. Retrieved from https://connect.oakbay.ca/admin/projects/archives/news_feed/2022-in-review [date accessed].