Karen Ingram - Taber Irrigation Impact Museum manager

The staff and volunteers at the museum have done many research projects that would not have been possible without the Taber Times on microfilm.  Our summer students have spent many hours compiling a book of some of the Associations and Clubs that have had chapters in Taber.  We have spent hours researching some of the businesses in town and continue with this project.   We have shared our research with the Taber Times with articles about our early oil patch history and have compiled several items on our early coal mining history.

Do you know when sewer first came to Taber or when Highway 3 was paved?  Did you know that the first Taber’s first wooden sidewalks were built in the spring of 1908?  Did you know that there was a Douglas Lake in Taber and that in 1913 a boat capsized there?  Have you heard about the 16 year old from Barnwell who had his arm ran over by a train and then was hit by a car on his way home? (talk about a bad day).  Did you know that automobiles were in Taber by 1913 and one ran into a milk wagon, precipitating a bylaw telling citizens which side of the street could be used by cars and which by horses?  Did you know that there were at least 16 mine accidents serious enough to make front page news between 1909 and 1930?  We did!

These are just a few of the things that you can find by going through the pages of the Taber Times on microfilm.

Do you have a family scrapbook and have some family stories that you would like to verify, would you like copies of obituaries, wedding announcements or even descriptions of the wedding that were held 40 or 50 years ago?  Are you trying to verify birth dates?  These are some of the things you can find in our microfilm records and yes copies can be made of any of these articles?  As technology changes things become easier to duplicate.  As little as two years ago we could not have made you a copy from our microfilm but we have since discovered that a photo taken by a digital camera without a flash on, will reproduce quite nicely after downloaded onto a computer and played with a bit in a photo program.

Your next question may be, how do I go about finding something I want to know more about?  The answer is two fold, you are welcome to come in and do the looking or we will do it for you?

You then ask, what will it cost me?  Our answer, if you come in and do the searching and have a camera to take a photo for you to download on your computer there will be no charge.  Our staff is always happy to assist you.  If you don’t have the camera and we need to take the photo, download, correct and print there will be charges for the copies.  If you don’t have the time or inclination to do the research, we are happy to do it for you, but there will be charges for our time as well as for copies.

It is important to note that a search through one year of articles is much easier than a search through ten years, so try to narrow your time frame.   Allow time, whether you are doing the searching or we are it will take some time.  Don’t expect to walk in and leave ten minutes later with everything you want.

Thank you to the Taber Times for the microfilm we have and hopefully you will be able to keep supplying it so that someone, in 2090 can find information from 2050.  Hopefully the Taber Times and the Museum Archives will both still be vibrant parts of the community then!