Every year the Saskatchewan Council for Archives and Archivists celebrates Archive Week during the first week of February.
Communities such as Humboldt, La Ronge, Lloydminster, North Battleford and Prince Albert, as well as many other towns hold local events.
This year Pahkisimon Nuye?áh Library in Air Ronge hosted the event that boosted four exhibits.
The photos and documents on display come from community members who donate items.
Archivist Graham Guest has boxes of material that he goes through in order to prepare for Archive Week.
“I look around and I think, ‘what is not being used?,” said Guest. “The one of Father Megret is just a binder of negatives, the public doesn’t see it. So, I digitized of the negatives, and made prints and researched background information to get names of people and make a display.”
Father Jean Megret was born in France in 1922 and after he was ordained he traveled three months by a ship, train, bus and airplane to arrive in Manitoba in 1946 to begin his ministerial work.
Throughout the years, Father Megret continued west to Saskatchewan and served in communities such as Wollaston, Stony Rapids, La Loche, Fond-du-Lac and Black Lake.
The photos at the Archive Week showcased his journey as he helped to build chapels and houses in these communities.
“For the older people, they lived through a lot of this. There are displays out there that people are recognizing people and they can tell me names that I haven’t got, which is very good,” explained Guest. “The younger people might be totally unaware, especially if they haven’t grown up in La Ronge and the north, so for them, it’s just telling them what was here before them, and the history.”
Guest adds that the popularity of the event is growing and people of all ages enjoy coming to learn about the rich past of Saskatchewan.
(Photo by Katrina Cameron)