2022 Presidents Message

The COVID-19 pandemic has had far-reaching impacts, including threatening the future of ours and other small-town museums. These museums are full of history, passion, and unique artifacts, but they are in peril. One threat is that the digital world is making museums less relevant. When the museum posts pictures on line, there’s less need for people to go visit them in person. Our museum has some artifacts that can’t be transferred to the online world. And then the pandemic shut us down, CHAPS had the good fortune to have received a large bequest from the Lambert estate which has protected us from the “small town economic threat”. 

There seems to be a generational divide, regardless of the pandemic, where a lot of small local museums are run by older people. And the next generation doesn’t seem to be coming to take over. Volunteers have become more important than ever to keeping our small town Cochrane museum alive.The CHM is lucky to have extraordinary volunteers who help with everything, special events, setting up displays, cataloguing artifacts, researching and helping with administrative tasks. Thank you. 

There is a type of “beauty” in our small town Cochrane museum. It is like sharing family albums. Rather than each family storing memories in attics or barns and losing them to time, they bring their collective history to us. Nothing captures Cochranes small town character, soul and past like our CHM. From purchasing a membership to supporting our local history, to volunteering, discovering your own history through research or waiting and sharing our local history, if you care about or want to learn more about our shared history, you need to become a member today. 

Thank you, 

Larry Want 

President 

CHAPS