Hooper Wing: The 1910 Addition
Museum
he
Museum was set up by Sister Mary Theodore when the new addition
opened. As curator, she set up displays of curious items. The museum
is described as a large room with three windows facing Humboldt
Street, so it was near the classroom spaces. Sister Mary Theodore
catalogued and displayed everything that would be of interest, presenting
stuffed birds, 1500 sea shells of 300 different varieties, fossils,
minerals, travel souvenirs and even an autograph book, filled with
birthday greetings and poetry presented to Miss Louisa Helmcken
by her loving schoolmates ... St. Ann's Convent, Victoria B.C.,
June 24th 1879.
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Many artifacts
in the museum were of historical significance for British Columbia.
Bishop Demers acquired the first printing press in the area, for
his publication "Le Courier de la Nouvelle Caledonie",
in 1856. In 1858, Amor de Cosmos used the press to print the first
"Colonist" ,the Victoria newspaper which would eventually
merge with the Times to form the current daily in the city. The
press served the "Cariboo Sentinel" and the Kamloops "Inland
Sentinel", before arriving at St. Ann's in 1910.
Books, photograph albums, a missionary Mass kit, a scale model of
the pioneer school house, the organ brought to Victoria by Bishop
Demers when he first arrived in the 1840s, an axe and cedar beater,
the rifle that killed Archbishop Seghers in 1866, a spinning wheel,
dolls, pennants, flags and small, stuffed mammals are some of the
other items that could be found in the museum. Some of the most
valuable items, in terms of appraised cost, included the South Pacific
collection of Mr. and Mrs. Bell, which came to St. Ann's through
their daughter, a Sister with the convent. Clothing, footwear and
weapons were among the items left to the school. They were placed
with the other objects of material culture from European settlers,
and the First Nations peoples of Alaska, Labrador and the West Coast.
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There was a
little store next to the Museum. Ruth Hall (McIntyre), a student
during the 1940s, and later a teacher at the Academy, remembers
purchasing trinkets and cards with religious scenes. The girls were
not supposed to carry anything into the chapel, but they would place
these holy cards and medals in their prayer books, to show and to
trade with each other.
Most of the items from the museum were dispersed when the school
closed in 1973. Many classes were brought into the museum, either
to gaze at the interesting displays, or to focus on certain objects,
for study in a class. The educational value of these items continued
when a teacher began a Montessori school for young children in Victoria,
and was given many of the sea shells and the harp from the museum
collection. The Ethnological collection went to the Royal British
Columbia Museum in 1978. Other pieces were lost, sold off, sent
to the St. Ann's Archives or may still be waiting to be found among
a former student's keepsakes!
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