We are now pleased to be offering digitization services! Let our experienced team make your real memories come to life! Visit reelmemories.ca for more information or email us at fflt1910@gmail.com.
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Reel Memories of the Lakehead is a public history project dedicated to the preservation and exposition of historical film footage of the Lakehead region. The project is being undertaken in partnership with the Thunder Bay Museum with the objective of making the digitized footage available to researchers and the public. This is one of our most ambitious projects as it involves sorting, inspecting, repairing, assembling, digitizing and logging 20 years of film clips from the nightly news from the local television station in what is now Thunder Bay, Ontario. The footage is on 16mm film which was shot between 1954 and 1978, with almost 2,000 reels ranging from 100 ft. to 1,200 ft in length. Television arrived at the Lakehead in 1954 and by 1958, the local station began producing its own programming. For twenty years, the news was filmed on 16 mm before it was replaced by video tape. Luckily, the old footage was not discarded, unlike other television stations across North America as they moved into a new era. The Friends of the Finnish Labour Temple were asked if we could help to bring the collection to the public.
This is a unique collection containing approximately 200 hours of archival footage that provides a glimpse into the everyday lives of Canadians. The footage provides us with a keyhole view of what things were like through the years and is a way of sharing the richness of our past with future generations. Although the footage focuses on Thunder Bay and the Lakehead region, it captures a moment in time for the events that have regional, provincial and national relevance. For example, we now have local footage of how Canadians prepared for the potential disaster during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and we can also revisit the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway from the perspective of the farthest inland port.
Using this footage, which has not been seen in decades, we have sought ways of engaging the public. Our objective is to release portions of the footage in order to collect the memories from local residents who witnessed or simply remember events. In addition to appealing to nostalgia and providing entertainment, we are adding these personal memories to the official record contained in newspapers and other documents. We are also working with the Department of History at Lakehead University, providing opportunities for students in the Public History specialization and to specialists in Canadian history. Members of the department, students and former students have contributed to our Facebook page which is used to post film clips in order to illicit reactions. Our postings on Facebook have been viewed as many as 12,000 times and have received hundreds of comments that are now in our database. Preserving this material and engaging with people who remember the events is a novel way of preserving the past for future study.
With support from the Thunder Bay Community Foundation, we successfully produced “News From the Giant,” a series of eight “year-ender” highlight newsreels based on events in the collection. The newsreels are available to stream for free on Researchtv.ca and were also broadcasted on Thunder Bay’s local television station, CKPR, in May 2022! These newsreels also form an important part of “Digital Media Outreach for Seniors” which is an outreach project in association with the Thunder Bay Museum and the Government of Canada New Horizons for Seniors Program.
Through our website, public presentations and other activities related to this project, we engage the public and welcome contributions that help us identify the people, places and events featured in the film footage. Submissions of 16mm and 8mm film footage is also welcome if the footage relates to the Lakehead region and can be donated to the Thunder Bay Museum’s archival film collection.
