Community oral history workshop highlighting Canadian women last weekend in Milk River

The Milk River Historical Society will be hosting a community oral history workshop this weekend. This project has been a couple of years in the making due to delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The project started in October 2019 and had plans to continue in the spring of 2020, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic it was postponed to 2021, and then once again rescheduled to Nov. 5, 2022.

“This project was created thanks to the the Centre for Oral History Tradition at the University of Lethbridge, the support of the Galt Museum and most importantly, funding from the Community Foundation’s Henry S. Varley Fund,” said Dale Leffingwell with the Milk River Historical Society.

The event will take place Saturday at the Heritage Hall in Milk River and will run from 9:30 a.m to 4:00 p.m. with lunch and snacks included in the admission fee.

Leffingwell said the workshop will highlight women in history through various speaker’s presentations.

“We wanted to focus this workshop on the women in southern Alberta, that’s the overall theme of it, and of course we will start with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth and review her involvement, including her involvement in the military,” said Leffingwell.

He said that will tie in with another presentation from the Lethbridge Military Museum, on the involvement of women in the military.

“The whole idea there is to encourage people that may hear part of the stories and they can add to it and encourage people to come forth with their stories about women in their area,” said Leffingwell.

He said one of the presentations will be from Diane McKenzie who just completed a master’s program at U of L and has done research through the Prairie provinces on the difficulties of women carrying on family traditions on farms.

There will also be a motivational speaker and a U of L professor presenting at the event.