The proposed library/museum building in under review but the Whistler Museum and Archives is continuing its work of preserving Whistler’s history.
Although the "temporary" home of the museum is jammed full of exhibits, artifacts and archives, a new exhibit will go online later this year.
The society announced last week that it had received a grant from the Virtual Museum of Canada’s Community Memories Program to develop an online, interactive Web site on the history of Olympic bids in Whistler.
It was an unsuccessful bid for the 1968 Winter Olympics by Vancouver businessmen, who formed the Garibaldi Olympic Development Association, that was the catalyst for the development of Whistler Mountain in the early 1960s. Later bids for the 1972, 1976 and 1980 Winter Games were also unsuccessful but are an important chapter in Whistler’s history and provide context for the current bid for the 2010 Games.
The Web site, when completed, will include photographs from the 1960s and ’70s, personal stories of community members involved in the bids and other digital media.
The Olympic history Web site will be the museum’s second major online exhibit. A Web site with photographs and text telling pioneer Myrtle Philip’s life story has been online for a couple of years.
A collection of photographs from the Whistler Question’s archives is also being digitized by the museum and will be available for viewing online.
The Whistler Museum and Archives Society’s Web site is: www.whistlermuseum.org. From the museum Web site there is a link to the Myrtle Philip Web site, which is hosted by Canada’s Digital Collections program, an arm of Industry Canada.
The Whistler Museum and Archives Society is one of the leading community museums in Web-based and digitized collections.
Anyone with any material they feel should be included in the Olympic history Web site is invited to contact Kerry Clark at the museum: 604-932-2019.
