About this Event

Goulbourn Museum invites you to join us on Thursday, April 15 at 7:00 pm for the inaugural installment of our 2021 Speaker Series. Join Mara Benjamin, curator at the Erland Lee Museum, as she walks us through the key role that Women’s Institutes have played in preserving the local histories of small-town Ontario.

Title: One Tweedsmuir at a Time: How the Women’s Institute preserves community histories

Topic: Since its inception at the Erland Lee (Museum) Home in 1897, the Women’s Institute (WI) has been dedicated to empowering, educating, and supporting women. WI members have worked tirelessly to improve their communities through fundraising and advocacy and have preserved their local histories through Tweedsmuir Community History Books for generations. Now, nearly 150 years after the WI began, we continue to record our histories for those who come after us through branch Tweedsmuirs. Thanks to the support of Library & Archives Canada, we have been able to scan and make public hundreds of Tweedsmuirs through our Virtual Archives website. So, while our method of preserving history may be changing, our dedication to our communities remains the same. For Home & Country.

About the Presenter: Mara Benjamin is the Curator at the Erland Lee (Museum) Home. Prior to coming on as curator, she was an active volunteer at the museum and worked as the Lee’s summer intern for a few summers during her undergraduate degree. Mara completed an Honours Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology & Archaeology from McMaster University before going on to earn her Master of Museum Studies degree from the University of Toronto. When she is not working at the museum, reading about museums, or visiting museums, Mara enjoys hiking, crocheting, and tending to her house plants and balcony garden.

Event Logistics: To register, click HERE. Upon registering, participants will receive an email confirmation. This event will take place over Zoom. On the day of the event, we will email participants an invitation to access the Zoom meeting. Please register by noon on April 15 in order to receive the Zoom invitation.

The event will start promptly at 7:00 pm and run for one hour. We encourage attendee participation during the Question and Answer period.

For any questions, please email register@goulbournmuseum.ca.