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Ashcroft Journal features in museum heritage event

Participants in the free event on August 25 will tour the 1898 Journal building and share in a few of its secrets.
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Ashcroft’s first museum was located in the upper floor of the Journal building.

Every year the Ashcroft Museum hosts a heritage event in August celebrating a part of the town’s past; and this year’s event will take a look at the history of one of Ashcroft’s oldest buildings, and its oldest continuously-operating business: The Ashcroft Journal.

The paper began in an office on Railway Avenue in 1895, and was called The B.C. Mining Journal. In 1898 it moved to a newly-constructed building on Fourth Street, and shortly thereafter changed its name to The Journal. It has operated out of the same building ever since, and is the second-oldest continuously-operated weekly newspaper in the province.

The event, which starts at the Journal building at 10 a.m. on Thursday, August 25, will commence with a guided tour and history of the building by Journal editor and local historian Barbara Roden. Participants will learn about the history of the building and the paper, and have a chance to see some of the building’s quirks and oddities, such as an antique fire extinguisher and the room ominously called “the morgue”.

The event will then adjourn to the museum next door, where curator Kathy Paulos will show a PowerPoint presentation documenting the changes to the building over the years (did you know that it housed Ashcroft’s first museum, and that many of the current museum’s artifacts come from it?). There will also be a chance to glimpse a part of the building that was last seen in 2010, via a series of photographs taken of the upstairs quarters of the building. Have you ever driven or walked past the Journal building and wondered what was on the second floor? Wonder no more.

The heritage event is free, and refreshments will be served at the museum following the tour of the Journal building. For more information, call Kathy Paulos at 453-9232 or Barbara Roden at 453-2261.