The Pitt Meadows Museum is Standing the Test of Time

Looking back article from February 28th 2018

As Heritage Month comes to an end, the Pitt Meadows Museum continues to celebrate the theme – Heritage Stands the Test of Time.  How better to represent this concept in Pitt Meadows than to have a year long anniversary party celebrating the Museum’s 20-year tenure in the Old General Store building on Harris Road. 

In this 2018 year – that also marks the 160th birthday of British Columbia -- It is amazing how much the number eight factors into the history of our community museum site.  So amazing in fact, we are highlighting “Eighteen Things You Didn’t Know About the Old General Store Site”.  Below is a quick list of eights that relate:

1886 – the store is built on a site on Herring Road on the banks of the Fraser River.

1908 – the store is moved to the site it sits on today – will it move again in 2018?

1988 – the McEwan family has the building designated a municipal heritage structure – the first in Pitt Meadows.   The same year the fancy iron gates go on the front of the building.

1998 – the Pitt Meadows Museum opens in the site on Pitt Meadows Day

The building was in off shore ownership when the District of Pitt Meadows purchased the site in 1997 and spent more than eight months restoring it before the Museum moved in.

The building closed as a store in 1930c – so no, you did not buy your lottery ticket here.  And, you guessed it, that was 88 years ago.

In 1885 the CPR railway was completed just to the north of where the store would soon be located, and parts of the building are said to sit on the CPR right of way and, at the time of restoration in 1997, retention of those parts had to be negotiated into the Museum’s use of the site.

8:00 at night is the time Mr. Baynes remembered (in an oral history recorded in 1980c) the store being open to each day and this allowed the building to be used for “social gatherings” each evening.

Built heritage often stands the test of time because the building’s use evolves to make it relevant in the community as time goes by.  This grand old lady was once the place to go to get supplies, pay bills, send mail and meet/greet and catch up on news, and, at the same time, house the storekeepers’ families.  When that time had passed, she became a home and a storage facility with the last of the homeowners realizing the necessity of heritage designation.  After a short period of neglect through offshore ownership in the 1990’s, a thoughtful municipal council came to her rescue by realizing her continued existence could only be guaranteed by making her relevant again – enter the Museum and Archives.  Happy 20th birthday to us.

 

Leslie Norman, Curator of the Pitt Meadows Museum and Archives