Treasure troves are usually found under one’s feet; think of “X marks the spot” on maps. It isn’t often that a treasure trove is found overhead, but that’s precisely what happened last week, when members of the Ashcroft Volunteer Fire Department under the direction of chief Josh White held a ladder exercise at the Journal office, got into the otherwise inaccessible second storey of the original building, and brought out the items being stored up there.
I knew there were things up there; I’d seen them, briefly, when the upper storey was last accessed almost two years ago, and I had screwed up my courage to climb up and take a look. There were bundles of what looked like old newspapers (how old?) wrapped in garbage bags, and four boxes of photographs (when from?), but there was no time to examine them closely, and no way to bring them down.
The entrance was boarded up once more and there the items sat, only a few feet above my head, until last week, when the firefighters climbed up and brought everything down. At one point, as I watched from the laneway, those who had gone up stood framed in the doorway, examining the contents of one of the garbage bags before passing it down with the rest.
When we got them into the Journal office, the boxes of photos turned out to be from the period 1978 to 1982, organized by week and accompanied by the cutlines that had appeared with them in the paper. The garbage bags contained issues of the newspaper going back to its first one in 1895 (when it was the B.C. Mining Journal), arranged by year and appearing to span the complete period 1895 to 1950 or so.
This was treasure enough, but it was the contents of the bag that the firefighters had examined that took my breath away: a collection of more than 150 posters and handbills, most from the 1920s. They were from Ashcroft, Clinton, Lytton, Walhachin, Spences Bridge, Lac la Hache, Green Lake, and Cache Creek; there was even one from Agassiz.
Many of the Clinton posters were for various Clinton Balls, and it was interesting to note that ladies got in for free (it was $2 for gents), doubtless to encourage more members of the fair sex to attend. A Walhachin poster advertising a Christmas Dance in 1921 states that proceeds will go to the W.S.A.A.A. (Walhachin Soldiers something something Association?), while a 1928 poster for Green Lake’s sixth annual Frontier Days features a photograph of a cowboy on a bucking bronco; a rarity for those days of printing.
Posters and handbills for events in Ashcroft — dances, balls, masquerades, movies, race meets, an Ice Carnival at the skating rink, Armistice and Dominion Day celebrations, children’s entertainments, and much more — make up the bulk of the collection. Several events were held under the auspices of the Ladies Auxiliary, as fundraisers to benefit the Lady Minto Hospital (which is what it’s called on posters from 1920; by 1925 it has become the Ashcroft and District General Hospital).
It is tiny details of history such as this that I look forward to teasing out as I catalogue the posters. A big thank you to the AVFD for recovering these precious pieces of our past, most of which have been long since lost to time.
editorial@accjournal.ca
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