We’ve been pretty busy here with plenty of tours (locally and globally) and our weekly teas.
No tea was hosted on the 23rd out of respect for Karen Barker’s funeral. Our next tea will be hosted on the 30th and as per usual, we will be providing tea and treats.
If you’ve watched too much Doctor Who and feel like traveling through time yourself, come see our new Travel Through Time display in the Main Building and our 5 beautiful wedding dresses worn between the years of 1886 and 1953! Nothing like a bit of history to sooth that time time travelling desire.
Speaking of history, here’s your historical tidbit for the week. In 1918 the Hanna area was being swept with the Spanish influenza. Countless people caught the illness, and many of those people didn’t survive. Areas that housed the ill were quarantined from the public in an effort to reduce the spread of the disease. Due to the large amount of sick individuals and the ever-growing need for better care, Hanna gained several hospitals throughout the years. The first being Hanna’s cottage hospital, open from 1918 to 1922. The next hospital was three stories with many more rooms and more modern care available. One of the nurses who worked at this hospital is a featured nurses in our museum hospital – Carolyn Madge. Carolyn graduated from the Calgary General Hospital in 1954 and came to work at the Hanna hospital for several months until she quit to become a full-time mother. Her nursing skills did not go to waste, as rambunctious children have a tendency to get scraped up. Later, as her children were leaving home, she worked as a teacher’s aide in several Hutterite colonies in the general area. Carolyn passed away at the age of 86 on December 13th, 2016.
Coming up, we have our next tea on the 30th at 2:00pm. Stop by if you’d like to hear some of Hanna’s local history and get some free food out of the deal. Our bandstand has been given a complete makeover and looks brand new! In fact, it looks so great we have some tentative plans for putting it to good use during the Fall Fair. We’ll be providing some more details next week. That’s all for now so until next time, make history!