Newmarket museum to get new look during temporary closure

Residents are invited back in early February 2020

Newmarkettoday.ca
Dec. 16, 2019
Kim Champion

The Elman W. Campbell Museum will be closed from Dec. 21, 2019 to Feb. 4, 2020 for renovations to spruce up its look, along with regular maintenance.

As part of the upgrade, new carpet will be installed on the premises, thanks to $30,000 in funding provided through the Town of Newmarket’s 2020 budget.

The ever-popular Wee-fun Wednesdays program for children aged one to four, and their caregivers will resume at the Main Street museum on Wed., Feb. 12, 2020 from 10 a.m. to noon.

You also have until Tuesday, Dec. 17 to visit the museum exhibit, Gallery of Festive Heritage Trees.

“The Royal Family celebrated the holiday season with Christmas trees even before the custom became popular,” states the Friends of the Museum, a volunteer group that puts in about 4,000 hours each year at the facility. “Whether your style is Victorian, Edwardian, or Retro, there's something to inspire everyone.”

In addition, the Newmarket Historical Society continues to fundraise for its $32,000 goal to digitize the thousands of records that document the town’s rich history.

The treasure trove of Newmarket’s history is contained in the one-room archives at the museum. It is currently closed to the public while the project is underway.

The volunteer-run society earlier this year launched the archives digitization and preservation project that will see it hire a professional archivist who will transform a mountain of papers, historical documents, photographs and more into an online, searchable digitized database.

The society plans for a grand re-opening of the archives in mid-2020.

Meanwhile, there was some flooding in the museum basement on Aug. 17 but no damage occurred to the collection, according to the minutes from the Sept. 19 museum committee meeting. It was also noted that there had been wildlife control issues in the museum building due to bats and squirrels that got in.

The Elman W. Campbell Museum is at 134 Main St. S. For more information, visit here.

If you’d like to help preserve the past by becoming a sponsor of the archives digitization project, visit the Newmarket Historical Society here.