Despite COVID-19 and all its uncertainties, the Virden Pioneer Home Museum staff accomplished a great deal this season. Some of their work can be viewed online.
While the number of visitors decreased substantially, the staff applied their resources to complete several projects over the summer of 2020.Check out the Virden Pioneer Home Museum website and see what they accomplished: virdenpioneerhome.wixsite.com/museum/tours
The staff produces several Tiny Tours over the summer months illustrating artifacts from the museum and relating them to Victorian live in the 1880s. All these tours are available on the museum website and on Instagram. For those who might want to use these tours as an educational tool with their children, there are also a series of questions related to each tour.
Another project the staff produced was a scavenger hunt using old photos from the museum archives and including clues as to what buildings might have replaced them. This scavenger hunt could be conducted on foot or by automobile. It also can be found on the museum website.
The staff also researched several pioneers or first families of Virden. These articles were printed in the Virden Empire-Advance and are also on the website www.empireadvance.ca
Finally, the staff produced a 17-minute video which depicted Victorian life of an upscale Virden family in the latter part of the 19th century. The video was written, acted and produced by the summer staff of the museum. It will be distributed in the spring of 2021 to schools in Fort La Bosse along with an instructional guide to help educators explain to their students what life was like in Virden in the 1880s.
The Virden Pioneer Home Museum staff comprised of Madsen Naughton, Kim Johnson, Maemi Ens and Summer Staff Co-ordinator Madeline Peters did an outstanding job at the museum during this trying period.
Submitted by Rick Kristjanson, Board Chair, Virden Pioneer Home Museum
