Calendar for all seasons
Not all old calendars are destined for the recycling.
When a new year rolls around, most of us get rid of our old calendar. But in Palmerston North, there’s one that’s both timely and timeless.
Published annually since 2010, the Palmerston North Heritage Trust calendar features 12 photos, month by month, of our own bygone days.
This year’s publication, for example, focused on ‘‘school’’. Its cover features a picture of 1950s dads rather awkwardly posing with their preschoolers at a kindergarten, in the days when it was ‘‘not done’’ for fathers to be seen wheeling their infants in a pram or pushchair.
Other pictorial treasures look at country schooling; physical education classes (1950); girls in white pinafores dancing around a maypole (1900); school uniforms of 1948; and the ‘‘murder house’’ with school dental nurse and patient in 1947, among others.
October’s photo, taken at the Palmerston North High School in 1906, captured a sea of boys in a classroom.
Yes, there were girl pupils. If you look really hard, you can see a couple of female hair ribbons in the distance, at the back of the room.
It’s the unspoken comment, comedy and custom that makes pictures such as these a priceless record of how we once were – and how far we’ve come, in our own home city.
However, for 2019 the calendar has a surprise theme that just may feature you – or someone you know.
Meantime, Margaret Tennant, chairwoman of the Heritage Trust, tells the story of the calendar’s beginnings.
‘‘The Palmerston North Heritage Trust itself was started by Sir Brian Elwood, who was the administrator of a legacy from the estate of Miss Alice Hester Nicholl.’’
Nicholl, a woman who lived frugally as a recluse in a cluttered house, spent her last years in the Awapuni Home, but left a large monetary inheritance.
‘‘After funds had been allocated to the [then-named] Crippled Children’s Society, the Manawatu¯ Museum Society [forerunner of Te Manawa] and the Hospital Board, a small amount was left, allocated as funding for the Heritage Trust,’’ says Tennant.
A group of volunteers, led by her as chairwoman, administers this trust.
She ticks off some of the past themes of the heritage calendar: ‘‘Palmerston North on Parade [parades and celebrations], Childhood in Palmerston North, Transport in Palmerston North, Brick Buildings, Trains Through Time – one of the most popular, which we advertised to train enthusiasts – and Our Animal Heritage.’’
Tennant says: ‘‘We don’t make a profit from the calendars – the price has been held at $10 – as the idea was to promote the city’s photographic heritage.
‘‘One of the trust’s objects under its deed of trust is to encourage public awareness about the need to maintain, preserve and use archival material relating to the city and surroundings – and we see photographs and other images as an important part of this heritage.’’
The city library archives welcomes photos or memoirs from any local residents who would like to add something of themselves to its ever-growing collections.
The trust members, says Tennant, ‘‘have a lot of fun each year debating the annual theme of the calendar, selecting images and researching the captions ... We’ve learned that what interests us as historians and researchers may not always be something that someone wants on their wall for an entire month ... but it’s nice to have a project to work on together as a team’’.
Each year, demand for the calendars has grown, and ‘‘we now have quite a loyal following of purchasers.
‘‘The calendar is a good design to have on the wall and make notes on, and we’ve followed the same format each year.’’
The calendar is sold – cash only – to the public during Local History Week, which starts on October 29 at the city library.
So, what’s the theme for the 2019 heritage calendar?
‘‘It’s ‘women’s choices’,’’ says Tennant. ‘‘I was keen to see us acknowledge the 125th anniversary of women’s suffrage and felt it was a chance to celebrate contemporary women in the city.’’
It’s also, she points out, the centenary of women gaining the right to stand for Parliament in 1919.
Each month – 13 in all, including January 2020 – will feature presentday local women of many ages, work roles, ethnicities and backgrounds, plus an image they have chosen themselves.
The photos ‘‘include a particularly beautiful one supplied by Nuwyne Te Awe Awe Mohi, of her grandmother Witohi King (nee Te Awe Awe).
There’s one of Mina Mckenzie, first professional director of the Manawatu¯ Museum; period costume-clad ladies of the Manawatu¯ County Club, which celebrates its 90th year in 2019, supplied by Jean Corbin Thomas’’ and other female representatives of nursing, education, journalism, politicians, refugees, factory workers, volunteering and rugby.
Tennant’s personal favourite is the December 2019 picture.
This shows a Christmas celebration at Rostrata Maternity Home in the 1950s, ‘‘with the mums in dressing gowns and two women, presumably staff, dressed up as Father and Mother Christmas’’. ‘‘It also appealed to [library heritage team leader] Lesley Courtney, who chose it, because it suggests homeliness and informality, rather than the sterility of a hospital – and Lesley herself was a Karitane nurse in a previous working life.’’
‘‘We don’t make a profit from the calendars – the price has been held at $10 – as the idea was to promote the city’s photographic heritage.’’
Margaret Tennant