In 1936, the city of Port Arthur almost took on a pet moose.
"There was a letter written to the parks board requesting they take over custody of a moose that somebody had," said city archivist Matt Szybalski.
The parks board turned it down because they didn’t want to cover the expense of caring for the animal and while the request and denial are in the city’s records, Szybalski couldn’t discover what the moose’s fate ultimately was.
That same year, a law was passed forbidding the storage of pulpwood in Boulevard Lake. The dam on the Current River was originally built to generate power for Port Arthur and it later became part of the city’s logging operations, said Szybalski.
"That kind of marked the beginning of that lake’s use as a recreational area," he said. "It was also the year in which it was given its official name of Boulevard Lake."
These are just a few of the facts found in documents, pictures and other historical artifacts on display Thursday and Friday as part of Archives Awareness Week at the City Archives and Records office on Vickers Street.
The province-wide event opens the archives to the public from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. both days for tours of the facility. Szybalski said they use the two-day event to encourage the public to visit the facility and see how they operate.
"That’s why we preserve the records," he said. "That’s why we put all the time and effort into maintaining them. We have them going back to the 1870s."
Because 2011 is the United Nation’s International Year of Forests, this year’s display features the records of the Forest Capital of Canada award Northwestern Ontario received in 2000 from the Forest Capital Development Association.
The FCDA worked on a number of community-based forestry projects that year from education programs to the development of the Current River greenway.
Szybalski said they received the records from the program last year and it’s unusual to have those types of documents.
"We’re really the corporate archives of the municipality of the City of Thunder Bay and it’s predecessors – Fort William and Port Arthur – and we don’t get into a lot of community collecting," he said.
The City Archives and Records are open to the public year round by appointment. For more information visit www.thunderbay.ca/archives.
