When I first began my journey at the Wetaskiwin District Heritage Museum Centre back in 2017, I was asked by Karen Aberle, PhD, what heritage was. I answered “uh… its history, but spelt with a “g””, and in that moment I received the first of many exasperated looks. Answering her own question she said, “History is names and dates. Heritage is stories and feelings.”
The history of the green wooden trunk in our immigration exhibit is that it was made by a Russian immigrant who moved to Wetaskiwin in the 1930s.
The heritage of the trunk is that it was someone’s grandparents. The grandfather, Florian, was a shoemaker and a carpenter. He made the trunk himself, and all the couple’s belongings fit into this trunk. Florian made the trunk in a refugee camp in Germany. He fled, escaping the harsh political and economic conditions caused by the Russian Revolution in He was on foot and was willing to do anything to get a better life, and he did. Florian bribed his way into an access tunnel that led him into Poland. After that, he used other transportation to get into the refugee camp. In the refugee camp, he built the trunk. Florian came to Canada first, where he landed in St. Johns, followed shortly by is wife. When they arrived in Alberta, they followed a threshing crew to Wetaskiwin saying, “the farm is going where the green hay is!”
History is important.
Heritage is what connects us together.