After another year of trying to rally up interest in the Boundary Historical Society, members are still on the brink of dissolving the group.
At a special general meeting last Saturday, members bought the society another few months, until its AGM in the fall.
The society can’t run without a board of directors and over the last two elections, it has struggled to fill positions. Last fall, it put off its annual election because it didn’t have enough interest and it had an extremely low turnout at the AGM.
At Saturday’s meeting, it was hoped new members would step forward and take positions. Instead, many of the same members agreed to hold their positions for the rest of the year to keep the society from being dissolved.
The biggest problem is the society has an aging membership and isn’t able to continue at the same pace as in the past.
Deb Billwiller and her husband John were elected as secretary and treasurer respectively, but Deb says this is the last time they will fill those positions.
“I know that I am absolutely not going to be doing this again next year,” she said, noting that her husband feels the same way.
Les Johnson was re-elected as president but feels someone else could do a better job.
“I accepted this role because I was told it was the easiest one,” he joked.
During the meeting, Delphine Novak was elected as the vice-president with Peter Kootchin and Peter Koftinoff filling the director roles.
Each position only had one nominee and this meant there wasn’t an actual election.
After the meeting, the group had only 47 registered members for the current year, down from 74 last year. However, this number could go up throughout the year if people continue buying the $10 memberships, Johnson said.
Of that membership, only two members are under the age of 50 and more than half the group doesn’t have email. This makes it challenging to organize events or share information for a group that covers the entire Boundary area.
The fix, according to Johnson, is to encourage the younger generation to help.
“We really need more passionate people,” he said.
For those that might be interested but don’t know how they can help, Johnson says anyone can lend a hand whether it’s washing dishes after a luncheon or helping make posters. The younger generation may also have fresh ideas to help the society stay current, he added.
The society has plenty of ideas they would like to implement in the future. Each year it has three events, including a picnic at a historical site. It would like to expand on this by selling coffee cups with historical pictures, improving the signage to the Phoenix cemetery and printing a postcard book.
Barry Noll, a Greenwood city councillor, would also like to see updated information at the Phoenix cemetery so visitors can scan signs with their phones and get a database of who is in the cemetery and as much background as possible.
All of these ideas take more input from the community and society members encourage the public to join them.
“The kids with families from here will get something out of it,” said Johnson. “It probably hasn’t even occurred to them to help out. They don’t need to know anything about history (to join).”
Deb Billwiller agrees about younger generations stepping up, and would like to see the society have a Facebook page, blog and maybe a website of its own.
She feels that the younger generation can benefit personally from taking part in the society because it can help them understand their own history.
“If we don’t know where we come from, we will never know who we are,” she said. “A lot of young people don’t know where they come from.”