Adam Prudhomme
Editor
Lennox and Addington County Museum and Archives will re-open to the public on Tuesday for the first time since March, complete with a new exhibit.
Titled A Place Called Home, the latest display is a perfect fit for 2020 as residents have spent much of the summer getting re-acquainted with their own backyard in the era of staycations.
“A Place Called Home has been a year in the making, there’s been a significant amount of research and we wanted to create an exhibit that was about L&A County and why we call it home,” explains L&A County Museum and Archives curator JoAnne Himmelman. “We wanted to have a sense of who the people were in the county and why they decided to make a home here. We were looking the biology of the land, the agriculture, the towns, the dark skies, all of these together are what make L&A County so wonderful.”
Himmelman says they dug deep in their research to find interesting nuggets that span centuries. They include ‘did you know’ type tidbits such as Madeleine de Roybon d’Allone (1646-1718) was the first female land owner in Ontario after purchasing a piece of property in the Southeastern portion of L&A County. More recently, there are highlights of the royal visit in 1984.
In accordance with COVID-19 safety protocols, the museum had to do away with contact points and instead gone back to the roots of the museum, relying on good story telling to capture the imagination.
“It’s a really nice juxtaposition of old and new,” said Himmelman. “We’ve done that with old photos and new photography and really vivid colours throughout this space. We’re really proud of it.”
Many of the artifacts on display are from the L&A Historical Society collection.
Also currently on display at the museum is a collection of the Napanee Beaver’s own cartoonist Tim Nimigan and his popular Our Town series.
Guests that do want to visit the museum will have to make an appointment at www.lennox-addington.on.ca/museum-archives. Visitors will be required to wear a face mask at all times and will have to be screened before entering the museum.
From the website they can also book an appointment to meet with archivist Kim Kerr. Like the museum, access to the archives will be by appointment only. Guests will have the opportunity to book a three-hour window to work in a ‘pod’. They can also speak with Kerr prior to their visit and outline what sort of materials they’d like to have available for their research.