Touchstones Nelson launches Forestry and Life in the Duncan River Valley Virtual Exhibition
By Contributor
Touchstones Nelson is pleased to announce the launch of its newest online exhibit Landscape Lost: Forestry and Life in the Duncan River Valley.
The site is a collection of photographs by Robert “Bob” Wallace of the Upper Duncan River Valley including fire lookouts, old mining and trappers cabins, community gatherings, as well as, the communities of Howser and Lardeau.
The BC Forest Service hired Wallace around 1939 as a lookoutman at Bear Creek in the Upper Duncan River Valley.
More than 200 photographs document the area prior to the construction of the Duncan Dam that flooded the valley in 1967.
The images, beautiful in their own right, have added significance in that they document jobs, transportation methods and communities that no longer exist, yet were common place just over half a century ago.
The site includes a biographical sketch of the photographer and excerpts from a work journal kept by Wallace in the summer of 1942 as he worked on the construction of the Bear Lookout in the Upper Duncan Valley.
Visitors to the site will get a glimpse of the talents, hard work ethic and love of the outdoors Wallace shared with his family, friends and co-workers.
The creation of the site has been funded in part by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, University of British Columbia, British Columbia History Digitization Program. The exhibit is available at http://touchstonesnelson.ca/exhibitions/wallace/
The launch of the site will be celebrated at Touchstones Nelson on Saturday, October 27 from 1 to 3 p.m.
Nelson born Stanley G. Triggs, former curator of the McCord Museum of Photography at McGill University, who worked with Wallace and donated this collection of photographs, will be in attendance.
