A new curator at the Souris Valley Museum is bringing a fresh look to local heritage.
Katrina Howick began her tenure on May 20 and is still sinking her teeth into the intricacies and qualities of the local culture immortalized inside the museum's walls.
Howick said that she's always been drawn to the significance of the past.
She recalls camping with her family as a child, when she found a seminar on paleontology and archeology. It was then that she decided to abandon her first choice of digging up dinosaurs to instead study human artifacts.
"It's just really been a life-long passion," she said. "I've always been interested in archeology and the objects. As long as I can remember, I've always wanted to be an archeologist."
Now in Estevan, her first impressions of the quaint Souris Valley Museum focus on the unique charms that come with a small, rural museum.
"I really like the selection (here)," she said. "It's got some really interesting and unique pieces, things I've never seen before. I know they are out there but I personally have never run across them in a museum."
Howick is also very pleased with the projects started by past curator Twyla Exner, who began work on conservation and restoration of some of the objects, particularly those in the outside section that become weathered.
"Those projects are usually only undertaken in larger communities," said Howick. "It's great that there is a precedent that this city and the community around it will support that."
Howick is from Moose Jaw, but her studies have taken her from Saskatoon to Leicester, England, and internships from England, back to Moose Jaw, before coming to the Souris Valley. She has an undergraduate degree in archeology and a master's degree in museum studies, which she received in Leicester.
Studying abroad had its challenges, she said, but she was well-equipped to handle them with a little help from one of her University of Saskatchewan professors, who was English. She went Leicester to study because of the notoriety of the museum studies program there, which attracts a wide range of nationalities.
"Leicester is one of the oldest schools and they have a really good base and a lot of really great teachers. I went there to get the best (education) I could. Plus I always wanted to go to England, who doesn't? I took the opportunity."
With students coming from several Asian countries, North America, the United Kingdom and Continental Europe, Howick said she really learned the different perspectives people had when it comes to museums.
"You kind of got to understand the full scope of museums. You got to understand from the more basic museums, to the really big museums like the Royal Ontario Museum or the British Museum, or down to one of the more kitschy museums like Pitt Rivers, which is my favourite, in Oxford. It's just a hidden little wing. It's its own museum actually, in the back of a natural history museum. It's kind of secret and awesome."
Because of that background in archeology, her knowledge is more "object-based" she said.
"I am more used to dealing with (objects) and how the community perceives them. I've always been really fascinated with how people interact with them, so I'm trying make (Souris Valley) a bit more hands-on. I'm planning on setting up a handling collection, so people can actually hold the objects. Once you have a feel for them in your hand they mean so much more, which is one of the great things about my profession. I can go in the back and pick up anything I want, to study it and to learn about it."
Souris Valley is very tied to the community and its history, said Howick, and that's why people are so supportive of what goes on there. That's what keeps people donating artifacts.
"Once you provide people with a link to their own history, through that you can branch out to the broader history, so it's really good for educational minds. By providing this link to history, it also provides pride in the community. I find that once you have a really well-established museum that people actually like, people tend to be more proud of the community they're living in, and people are more connected to it.
"I'm a big believer that museums are for the people. They are for anyone who wants to come and learn about their history.
