Tag Archives: donations

General, Volunteers

#GivingTuesday?

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So it’s almost Tuesday. Hopefully you’ve survived the Black Friday crowds or maybe you opted to splurge online instead on Cyber Monday. Or maybe you didn’t partake in either but just got bombarded with promotional emails for the past week. But now we’d like to change the channel because December 1st is not just Tuesday, its #GivingTuesday!

What is GivingTuesday?

Imagine a day dedicated to giving back … around the world, across Canada and in your own community! Just as Black Friday kicks off the holiday shopping season for many people, GivingTuesday is the opening day of the giving season. GivingTuesday is a global day of giving. GivingTuesday is a time to celebrate and encourage activities that support charities and non profits. Whether it’s making a donation, volunteering time, helping a neighbour or spreading the word, GivingTuesday is a movement for everyone who wants to give something back.

And you’re telling me this because….?

Today and frankly until the end of the year, everyone is telling you they need you to give – Santa boxes for needy children, food banks need volunteers, and many local churches and charities are preparing to receive refugees in the coming weeks. And as passionate as I am about the work we do, I’m not asking that you make support for The Queen’s Own Rifles Regimental Museum a priority over these other urgent needs.

But some of you may be in a position where you can support more than one cause – be that with your money or your time. If you can make a financial donation great – it would go to help us with projects like digitizing 16mm films in our collection before they become unplayable; or to purchase new digital display products that can make our exhibits more engaging. You can donate on our GivingTuesday page to the Queen’s Own Rifles Trust which operates the museum – just type MUSEUM FUND in the online form Message box.

Some of you may be willing to give of your time as volunteers. We have a variety of opportunities. We generally gather at the museum most Thursday evenings from 1900 to 2200 hrs to work on very hands on projects from exhibits to hanging pictures to cleaning to cataloguing. But we also have volunteers who work remotely on research or transcribing or other tasks that don’t require your physical presence. If you’re interested in volunteering with us, check out our Volunteer page and complete an application.

What if I can’t do either at the moment – can I still help?

Giving-Tuesday-2015_250x250_greyYou can always become a social ambassador and share the word on Facebook, Twitter and Instragram about #givingTuesday – just make sure you use this hashtag.

Whatever the cause, we hope you’ll consider investing your time or financial resources or become a social ambassador on #GivingTuesday!

General

Paint, Mannequins and Thank You’s

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Over the past few months we’ve received two corporate donations which we’d like to publicly acknowledge.

Paint

Benjamin Moore

A conversation I was having with a colleague at work about repainting one of our exhibit rooms was overhead by another colleague which led to her father and eventually to the head office of Benjamin Moore Canada. The end result of “one thing leading to another” was some very expert advice on the most durable but also low VOC paints that would be most practical for our needs AND a donation of eight gallons of the said paint via one of their local retailers (Maples Paints on St Clair West.) Like most museums with limited operating budgets, donation of items in kind – like paint – can mean a big difference to what we can accomplish!

Mannequins

hudsons-bay-co-logoPretty much every historical museum uses mannequins to display costumes – historical clothing or in our case uniforms. But like many museum supplies, mannequins can be expensive – up to hundreds of dollars. The Queen’s Own Rifles Museum is no exception and although we have a large number of uniforms on display, we still have a closet full that aren’t!

Since my day job office is located at Queen and Bay (on top of the Queen Street Hudson Bay store), I arranged to have coffee about a month ago with Richard Montgomery, Chief Adventurer (a.k.a. Vice President and General Manager) of the Queen Street store. After reminiscing about my first job as a teenager at the Robert Simpson’s Queen Street Store (before it was bought by the Bay) and finding out that Robert had a degree in history, we talked mannequins. Richard said he’d be happy to help us out if he could and promised to check what they might be available. Almost four weeks later, staff delivered 2 full mannequins and 2 “busts” on stands to my office on the 18th floor!

mannequinsIn the picture above, your’s truly is the one with the head, and a couple of the others have been clothed with fig leafs for modesty’s sake. We’ve also undertaken a mannequin naming contest since they may be there a while until I can arrange transportation to their new home at Casa Loma.

Thank you

Thank you to both Benjamin Moore Paints Canada and The Hudson Bay Company for their generous gift in kind donations!

 

Artifacts, General

Museum Update December 2012

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New photos storage shelving installed December 2012.
New photos storage shelving installed December 2012.

December isn’t over yet but we want to provide both an update and to ask for you support before we all get wrapped up in the holiday hustle and bustle.

Cleaning and Cataloging Photos

Two volunteers – former Regular Force Rifleman Clay Downes and his wife Nancy of Georgetown, Ontario – have been busy over the last several weeks, cleaning and cataloging framed photographs in the museums collection. Cleaning off several layers of dust is pretty self explanatory but cataloging requires recording detailed information about each photo including a description of the photos content, and as much about the people included, location, date, occasion, photographer or studio, dimensions, framing, etc. that we can determine. All of this information is being entered into our new collections management software and will help us with taking future inventories, sourcing photos for future exhibitions, and IMG-20121216-00187providing resources for research projects. Between them they have provided 61 hours of volunteer service and deserve a large thanks!

Today Curator Major John Stephens, Assistant Curator CWO Shaun Kelly and Clay, removed some older shelving that had been built with whatever materials had been at hand and installed new metal shelving (see photos at right). These new shelves will provide much better storage for all our photos, now well organized by their object number. The team was very pleased with the results and once the cataloged photos were moved into the new shelving, Nancy had room to continue the very large project!

RENEWING OUR PAST: Supporting the Regimental Museum

The Regimental Museum is undertaking our RENEWING OUR PAST Campaign which consists of two parts:

Preserving Our Past includes efforts to protect and preserve our artifacts to ensure they will continue to be with us for a long time. Installing new storage, purchasing necessary but expensive archival materials, and creating a detailed collections database are all unglamorous but important parts of this phase.

Connecting with the Present includes re-imagining our exhibits, reaching out with social media, creating a volunteer program and providing museum activities and resources. We’ll shortly be creating a new “Soldiers of the Queen’s Own” exhibit in the Tower room which will start with a new coat of paint!

Elements are underway in both phases and with that comes numerous additional costs beyond our usual operating expenses. The Regimental Museum is governed, operated and supported financially by the Queen’s Own Rifles of Canada Regimental Trust Fund. You can help support the Museum and its RENEWING OUR PAST campaign by donating to the Trust through the CanadaHelps.org website. Under Fund/Designation select “Museum Fund” to ensure that your donation can be properly directed to our campaign. Donations received before the end of December, will be issued a 2012 charitable income tax receipt.

Thank you for your support and we wish you all a very happy holiday!