UNBC Facebook Project Helps Keep BC History Alive

July 6, 2011

How would you like to have grown up in a place that no longer exists, and to which you can no longer return? That was the situation faced by many of the residents of Cassiar, BC after the Cassiar Asbestos Mining Corporation shut its doors in 1992.

“When the mine shut down, so did Cassiar,” says Ramona Rose, UNBC’s Head of Archives and Special Collections, who recently gave a presentation at the Canadian Historical Association’s Conference at the University of New Brunswick on her efforts to document the community’s history using popular social networking site Facebook. “As often happens, when a community’s central source of employment shuts down, the town dies. Community members disperse and become hard to track so we were open to new methods.”

Shortly after closing its doors, the Cassiar Asbestos Mining Company donated nearly 2000 banker’s boxes to UNBC. The boxes were full of files and old photos documenting the history of the town and its people.

“The townspeople spread out so far and wide that we had trouble identifying many of the photos and other documents,” says Rose “With the help of third-year UNBC student Meghan Heitrich at the Geoffrey R. Weller Library, we started using social media to engage the widespread community of Cassiar.” Rose created the Cassiar Album Project on Facebook and uploaded dozens of unidentified photos to the Library's Facebook page, asking former Cassiar residents to help identify buildings and people.

Fortunately for the project, they were able to tap into an online community of former Cassiarites that has existed for more than a decade. They had a website “Cassiar… Do You Remember” and a Facebook group where they shared memories.

“The response was very gratifying. By end of April, we had received 335 comments on 111 photographs with only 4 photos generating no feedback,” says Rose. “But we got much more than that. Cassiar residents live all over the map now, but they feel connected to that time and place. It was interesting to see a new, self-regulating community spring up on our Facebook album. We initiated many discussions and were able to collect a lot of valuable data.”

Herb Daum of Powell River was born and raised in Cassiar and worked in the mine and at the mine’s garage. "Now that my hometown has been bulldozed and burned to the ground, I and many other Cassiarites no longer have roots,” says Daum, who administrates the online community’s website and Facebook page. “The website and group are our common ground and virtual community and Rose’s efforts have been much appreciated. Our community got really involved in the project and it was good to relive memories and contribute to the history of BC.”

Daum says the Cassiarites have a reunion planned in Penticton in 2012 and invites all former Cassiarites including those from Clinton Creek YK, who moved to Cassiar after their mine, too, was shut down, to check in at www.cassiar.ca.

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