AT THE MUSEUMS
Thelma Pepper was a Nova Scotia-born photographer who documented the lives of women and men on the prairies after moving to Saskatchewan in 1947. A feminist and an activist, she produced work that illuminates the critical roles played by women within their seemingly ordinary, everyday environments. For one of her projects, Pepper spent eight years producing portraits of Saskatchewan women, all of whom were over the age of eighty-five. On her many trips to the small towns where her subjects lived, Pepper also produced landscape photographs and recorded audio interviews. She died in 2020, and her work is now showcased in the retrospective exhibition Thelma Pepper: Ordinary Women, which continues at the Remai Modern in Saskatoon until October 11.
A major historic site at Niagara Falls, Ontario, is opening to visitors this summer. The Canadian Niagara Power Company generating station opened in 1905 and was the first major power plant on the Canadian side of the Niagara River. It was also among the first power stations anywhere to include a major tunnel project. Decommissioned in 2006, the station was later acquired by the Niagara Parks Commission. As part of a multi-year project, the renamed Niagara Parks Power Station is being transformed into a major attraction. Visitors will experience interactive exhibits and, beginning in September, will be treated to an immersive sound-and-light show at night. Careful work has been done to preserve the historical building, with elements of the facility’s heritage incorporated throughout. Plans for 2022 include allowing visitors to access the enormous tailrace tunnel that opens at the base of the Horseshoe Falls.
The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies in Banff, Alberta, has undertaken two digitization projects to mark the 115th anniversary this year of the birth of its co-founder, Catharine Robb Whyte. She lived in Banff with her husband, Peter, whose family operated one of the town’s first general stores. One project involves digitizing more than ten thousand letters Whyte wrote over three decades and sent to her mother in Concord, Massachusetts. Available online, the letters tell about life in the Canadian Rockies, friendships with people from the Stoney Nakoda First Nation, and the rise of Banff as a major tourist destination. The second project was designed to make other parts of the museum’s collection accessible online, including photographs, films, scrapbooks and other items related to Banff and to Canadian mountaineering. To explore these resources, visit www. whyte.org/research- collections.