SPORTS: LOCAL HEADS TO HALL OF FAME /PAGE 22
$2M GRANT COVERS UV WATER TREATMENT UPGRADE /PAGE 2 merrittherald.com
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MERRITT HERALD TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2016 • MERRITT NEWSPAPERS
FREE
PRESERVING HISTORY
IN MEMORY
GOING DIGITAL
New benches will honour the late Millie Mitchell
Millie Mitchell at the farmers market with one of her famous pies. Herald file photo Michael Potestio THE MERRITT HERALD
(Left to right) Merritt Mayor Neil Menard, director of the Nicola Valley Museum and Archives Murphy Shewchuk and presentation attendee Bob Scafe. Susan Gearing-Edge/Nicola Valley Museum and Archives David Dyck THE MERRITT HERALD
No need to comb through dusty old archives — back issues of the Herald are now available online. The project to digitize old copies of the Herald and the Merritt News — a local newspaper that has since gone out of print — has been a long and labour-intensive
one, but the results are impressive. “For hundreds of years we will be able to refer to these digital records, rather than having those dogeared pages stored in libraries — the way you see them so often — or the way you see them in newspaper sheds or shacks that are hard to access and become damaged
over time,” said Thompson Nicola Regional Director chair John Ranta, at the official launch event last Thursday (Feb. 11). It’s called the Newshound Newspaper Digitization Project, a partnership between the TNRD Library System, the Nicola Valley Museum and Archives, TRU and the Kamloops Museum
and Archives. The eventual goal is to digitize every newspaper that has ever been published within the TNRD. “It’s interesting that one of the contributors to this project is the Ike Barber Learning Centre which is at UBC,” said Ranta.
See ‘Newshound’ Page 3
City council will proceed with the installation of two benches in the parking lot beside the Nicola Valley Memorial Arena. The area is used by the local farmers market, and dedication plaques honouring one of its members, the late Millie Mitchell, will adorn the benches. The idea was brought forward by Coun. Mike Goetz at a previous council meeting, and on Tuesday (Feb. 9) city council decided to proceed with the project, which will now become a
budget item. The cost of the benches has yet to be determined. Mitchell was involved with the farmers market for many years, and had a spot set up to sell her baked goods each weekend. She passed away last March when she ventured into the woods in search of a rumoured biosolids dumping site. Her car got stuck in mud on a forest service road and when she attempted to walk out, she fell into a ditch and broke her hip. She was accompanied by a friend who survived the ordeal, but Mitchell succumbed to frigid overnight temperatures.
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