Archivists celebrate city’s wrinkles

fully, a really good lunch,” said the group’s president Lynne Smith.

The display of old photographs and memorabilia at the lunch will be added to some new ongoing projects by the volunteer archivists.

“We are doing businesses of Lloydminster, which, of course, is huge over 120 years. We’re also doing history of cultural organizations,” reported Smith.

The historical collection on hand also inspired long-time residents like Smith, who has been in the area for 78 years, to reminisce about her heydays in the city.

I used to.” nity to recognize the initiative and the spirit that motivated the first British settlers here while recognizing the First Nations as the original inhabitants. in Lloydminster in 1949 and remembers the community being a small town when she was a little girl.

Smith thinks saving the history of Lloydminster is so important, although she didn’t feel that way when she was younger.

“The community as we know it started in 1903,” he said.

The history books tell us Rev Isaac Montgomery Barr led the Barr Colony to settle here while Rev. George Exton Lloyd is the founder of Lloydminster.

“There’s lots of places in Lloydminster I remember being built. I remember when the sidewalks were wooden like a boardwalk. When you rode your bike on them they made a neat noise,” she said.

There was history in the making during the 120th anniversary of the City of Lloydminster.

Roughly 156 people took part in a lunch celebration sponsored by the Friends of the

Lloydminster Regional Archives and Lloydminster and District Co-op.

“We have a program and some singing and some musical drama and we have the story of the founding of Lloydminster, and hope -

“In the early days, I lived on the farm where I still live and we only came to town so mom could buy groceries on Saturday mornings,” recalled Smith.

“I was in the first graduating class from what is now E.S. Laird and then I started to see the city more than

“The older I get the more important I think it is,” she said.

That was music to the ears of Don Duncan, a former perennial chair of the volunteer board that owned and operated the archives for many years before the city recently took it over with funding.

“Without the founding of Lloydminster, we’d have nothing to celebrate whatsoever,” said Duncan.

He thinks the anniversary is an opportu -

Duncan asks, without an archive, how do we keep track of such things?

Ann Campbell, secretary of friends of the archives, recalls organizing a great centennial celebration of the city, noting with 20 years gone by, they thought this would be a good time to mark another milestone.

“I think it will be a fun celebration. There will probably be a bigger one on the 125th,” she said.

Campbell was born

Another senior, Lawrence Davidson, has been here since 1948 and rates most of the changes he’s seen good such as paving the roads, new houses going up and the population expanding as positives.

The historical lunch presentation also reunited him with old friends whom he hasn’t seen for years.

“It’s just great to get together again. Seeing this pandemic is over, we can visit once more,” said Davidson.