Langley Museum participating in UFV’s “Great War Day,” Oct 3

The University of the Fraser Valley is commemorating the centenary of the First World War, and the Langley Centennial Museum is getting on board.
 
The University is hosting the event Great War Day: Local Experiences and Legacies on Friday, October 3, which will provide an exceptional opportunity to learn about the Fraser Valley’s connections to the First World War through displays of memorabilia, artifacts, military or civilian representations, and local memories and commemorative projects.  Staff from the Langley Centennial Museum will be attending the event and taking some of its collected history along to share.
 
The event will allow members of the public to learn more about the impact of the War on the Fraser Valley, and in turn make it possible for them to share their own stories, or family legacies, about the Great War.  People are invited to bring along memorabilia or treasured family artifacts – photographs, military items, ephemera – to display.  Experts will be on hand to help make sense of the strange and inexplicable.
 
“As far as we know, this is the only event of this kind happening in the Fraser Valley for the Centenary,” noted Robin Anderson, Associate Professor of History at UFV.
 
The Langley Centennial Museum has recorded Langley’s rich history of this period, including the renaming of local streets for fallen soldiers following the war.  And the museum hopes to showcase one of its newest artifacts during the event: a medallion, known as the “Dead Man’s Penny,” issued to the family of Murrayville’s Art Johnston.  Johnston died in the French trenches in 1916.
 
Along with the memorabilia on exhibit and the Langley museum’s display, there will be displays from the Mission Museum & Archives, the Reach in Abbotsford, and the Chilliwack Museum.  There will also be presentations by students and faculty, and talks about the First World War throughout the day.
 
UFV is still looking for exhibitors and people interested in sharing their stories.  For more details, contact Angie Reid at angela.reid@ufv.ca or 604.557.4075.