By Veronica Beltran

years of research and digging

Archives highlighting local education donated to CNC

Nov 26, 2019 | 2:13 PM

PRINCE GEORGE–History made its way through the doors of the College of New Caledonia Tuesday, Nov.26th.

A three-volume collection of news articles, surrounding the history of local education, dating back to as early as 1910 were donated to CNC by the Prince George Retired Teacher’s Association Educational Heritage Committee. “What we basically designed it for was for anybody doing research,” said Tiiu Noukas, Chair of the Archival Newspaper Educational Articles Project.

The project was started in the 1990’s and was put together by volunteers “We kept a record– the library did that, they had an envelope in the drawer and we picked it out and there was a record of what was done each day, so that the next person knew how to continue on,” said Bob Wall, Former Editor of the Archival Newspaper Educational Articles Project.

Wall says it took a few years to finish one volume, and a whole lot of research; sifting through newspaper microfilm records finding stories related to education in our region.

For the volunteers this was also a learning experience, gaining knowledge about how far education has come, locally. “It’s just amazing how persevering people were in those days, they really wanted schools Like in the very early days when they were building the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway in Tchesinkut, they had a school for two years that was a canvas tent, and that’s up in the Rocky Mountains–it’s cold there,” said Noukas.

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“I am pretty blown away and they have they have surprised me before because they’ve also done complete histories in big volumes that they’ve given us already…so this group just keeps on giving,” said Kathy Plett, Director of Resource Centres at CNC.

The Archival Newspaper Education Articles Project volumes include information about local education from 1910 to 1946 and are available to the public at CNC’s library.