A legacy of our history
Waterloo Region Museum collection includes thousands of donated artifacts
KITCHENER — The items carefully laid out on the table tell a tale of one man’s war.
There are service ribbons and pins, uniforms, and official documents attesting that Frank Day served as a telegraph operator on the HMCS Assiniboine, a Royal Canadian Navy destroyer that escorted ships in the Atlantic during the Second World War.
But the trove of artifacts, recently donated by the Kitchener man’s family to the Waterloo Region Museum earlier this year, is full of human details that tell a richer story.
There’s the brass “sweetheart pin” engraved with the name “Peggy” — for Margaret, the young woman Day had met while skating in Victoria Park and whom he later married.
There are several complete uniforms, both summer cotton and winter wool, stencilled with his name. The narrow waist and slim tailoring attest to the slender build of the sailor, who was 23 when war broke out.
There’s a Christmas card, embossed with the coat of arms of the ship, in which he wrote in a neat, firm hand, “To my darling Peg, Loads of love and kisses XXX.”
There’s a train ticket from a leave in Ireland, a ration ticket for a bottle of beer, and even the handwritten copy of the momentous telegraph Day would have sent in May 1945 — marked with a misspelled “Confidencial” — announcing that the German High Command had surrendered unconditionally and that fighting in Europe was over.
Such donations help the museum fulfil its mission to tell the story of Waterloo Region, said Stacy McLennan, the curator of collections at the museum.
The museum cares for more than 46,000 items — one of the largest community museum collections in Ontario. The vast majority of those artifacts were donated, McLennan said. Each donated item is appraised after it enters the collection, and a tax receipt is issued.
In fact, a day seldom goes by when she doesn’t get an email or phone call from someone offering to donate something to the museum.
The most common items on offer are old pianos and organs, as well as wedding dresses, christening gowns and pieces of outdated farm machinery or wagon wheels.
“We are very particular about what we accept,” she said.
First, the item must be relevant to the central mandate of the museum and tell something about the story of the region and its people. That usually means it was made locally or owned by someone who lived here. It must be something that adds to the collection, rather than duplicates it, must be in good condition and ideally is supported by documents that explain its provenance — where it came from, how it was made, what it’s used for and who owned it.
Items that would be a better fit elsewhere are directed to other institutions, McLennan said. An offer of a Seagram
artifact, for example, would be directed to the City of Waterloo Museum, which has an extensive collection from the Waterloo distillery.
The regional museum only accepts artifacts in poor condition if they’re rare or unique. For example, the museum accepted the gift of part of a dugout canoe, with traces of the marks left by the tools that an Indigenous maker used to carve it from a tree trunk. The canoe was discovered submerged in Puslinch Lake and is so fragile it can’t be displayed, but its uniqueness earned it a place in the collection.
Ideally, the donation is not only an object of local interest, but includes telling details that fill in a local story.
The museum recently was given a handsome marquetry desk made of cherry, birdseye maple and other woods that was produced by a man in South Carolina.
Not only is the piece strikingly beautiful, but it was commissioned by Titus Nevills, a successful merchant and the first reeve of New Hamburg. The desk was made by Abraham Latschaw, a well-known Wilmot Township cabinetmaker, who painstakingly crafted it over 11 years from 1845 to 1856, and documented his efforts in a pencilled notation on the bottom of one of the drawers in the desk’s many pigeonholes.
Conservator Richard Fuller enjoyed the month or so he spent restoring the desk to full splendour. “You don’t always get the chance to work on something this magnificent,” he said, passing an appreciative hand over the woodwork.
Another favourite item is a simple wooden trunk brought to the region by a Dutch war bride. “It doesn’t look like much,” McLennan said. “But basically this little trunk is what she brought her life in.”
“I just think it’s so romantic,” she added. “Those sorts of human stories just show that people are people, regardless of the period. We want to be able to connect (the artifacts) with people today and emotions are a strong way to do that.”
Because the museum originated at the Doon Heritage Crossroads, many people don’t realize it welcomes more modern items. The collection includes several early BlackBerrys, for example, as well as a drone made by Aeryon Labs of Waterloo.
The museum would welcome more donations from local immigrant communities, such as those who came from Portugal or Newfoundland.
“People don’t think that’s something we’d be interested in,” McLennan said. “Those sorts of stories are going to become more important. We need to be collecting them while it’s fresh and we can record those stories.”