Goodbye? Hello! to Elizabeth

Elizabeth Grayson leaning on a display table in the Secrets of Radar Museum, August, 2022. Used with permission.

Sometimes a summer job contract or university intern really clicks with us and our mission and over the years we’ve had several employment contract staff and interns return to us or stay on as volunteers, sometimes for several years.

We are delighted to announce that following the conclusion of her summer Young Canada Works contract, during the Annual General Meeting, Elizabeth Grayson stood for election to the Board of Directors. She was unopposed and the membership unanimously accepted her election. She has taken on the job of handling memberships, among other things, and we couldn’t be happier.

During her three-month summer contract, Elizabeth worked diligently to catalogue, cull, and house several archival collections, attended museum network events, and developed her own interpretive approach to our exhibit material to provide excellent tours. Elizabeth is in the process of completing a Bachelors in Museum Studies at Western University and is brimming with ideas and enthusiasm. Welcome aboard, Elizabeth. We hope you enjoy your term on the Board!

Anticipating Summer '22

We are delighted to announce that we received funding through the Young Canada Works in Heritage program to hire a summer student! YCW is an excellent program that allows museums with small budgets to expand their capacity and get important work done. Our student will work with our collection and archives, learn to give awesome tours, and will participate in the day-to-day running of a small museum. Having a student means a return to our summer hours, opening 5 days a week! Our new student joins us for 13 weeks, beginning May 31 and we can’t wait!

Welcome to the team, Elizabeth!

An interesting idea..?

Today, while checking the museum's email, I came across a message quite unlike those I'm used to receiving.  It started out well, not unlike some of the more formal tour requests we get.

My name is _________.  I am contacting you from England.  I want to  make reservation for 4 people in December 2013.  Hope you can accommodate us on that date?

I thought, "Hey, sure, we don't have any tours booked in December, we're wide open.  And then I read on.  It turned out to be an email requesting a room booking for a holiday stay at an inn or hotel.  At first I considered not answering, but then I thought, "What if they really think we're an inn?  I don't want to be rude?"  And I wondered, what if it's a strange form of spam?  And I decided it was too well written for spam.  So this is what I wrote back in response:

Dear Mr. _________, 

You seem to have mistaken us for an inn !   We're a museum, in London, Ontario, Canada, not currently renting out cot space in our galleries, but as we are a small museum and constantly looking for new fundraising initiatives, we'll take the idea under advisement.   However, if you wish to book a tour while you're here, we would be delighted to host you.

Best wishes, 

I mean, some museums do sleep-overs, right?  Anyway, I hope the prospective guest finds it as amusing as we, here, did, and accepts my response with the humour it was intended.  The letter provided us a bit of a laugh amongst all the other, more serious things we slog through every day.