The Museum of the Cariboo Chilcotin celebrated its’ grand opening this weekend at the Williams Lake Tourism Discovery Centre after having been delayed last year due to the wildfires.
As well as having displays on the main floor there were new displays in the basement that Museum coordinator Joe Borsato says the City will be working on to be renovated.
“Most museums only ever display about 10-15 percent of their collection, and I think we’re close to that now,” he says.
“I haven’t done the final count on how many are on display but my guess would be pretty close to 2,000-almost 10 percent. We have 25,000 artifacts in our collection.”
Borsato adds that it was determined to utilize the downstairs space to better represent the community following a focus group meeting in February.
“I sat down probably late last year and said what do we need in order to represent the community not just to people who are passing through on 97 but people who live in the Cariboo-Chilcotin. What stories are we missing with just the upstairs, and mind you the upstairs has a lot of important stories,” he says.
The vast of majority of the artifacts displayed downstairs were chosen and assembled by summer students Zach Abel, Jane Boxeur, and Sophie Wong.
“They’ve done such a good job. They really picked up our inventory system really well, and they’ve done a really good job of picking some good artifacts to represent the community based on the mandates that I’ve set for it,” says Borsato.
“We’re really excited to make use of this space and we hope everyone can maybe forgive a bit of unfinished walls but hopefully that will be remedied in the next little while.”
Located at the Williams Lake Tourism Discovery Centre, the Museum of the Cariboo Chilcotin is open 7 days a week from 9am-6 pm until September 1.