Eastern Townships women share stories of mothers and grandmothers building their community

Judy Bachelder is proud to see her woven coverlet on display at the Colby-Curtis Museum in Stanstead, Que.

"It is something that is pretty special to me," said Bachelder, explaining that the decorative blanket was made many years ago by the members of a group called the Valley Weavers as a kind of exchange project.

"Each person wove, I think it was 12 squares in different colours. My colour was blue. So everybody else in the group wove one of their squares in my colour and at the end we exchanged them all."

The coverlet is a real-life representation of the social fabric woven by the group as they worked and spent time together in Stanstead County, which covers a broad area near the United States border about 150 kilometres east of Montreal.

The museum staff alongside the 13 women involved in the co-creation process. (Lea Grahovac/Colby Curtis Museum)

It is now one of a collection of items on display in the museum's new exhibit, The Caregivers, sitting alongside things like a donut mould, a meat grinder, recipe books and a brownie camera on a special display on the museum's second floor.

A look at women's roles in local history

"The main idea is to think about how we build community and how we are linked together," said Marie Lavorel, the curator of the exhibit.

Lavorel said that the museum really wanted to highlight the role that women and women's groups in the region have had as a kind of social glue for the English-speaking community.

"There is a lot of involvement, commitment from women … and often it's quite invisible." the curator said.

In order to connect with that work, the team at the Colby-Curtis Museum had to tap into a side of local history that has not been written down or shared in the same way that tales of the "founding fathers" have been.

Many of the items on display in The Caregivers are regular household items that could still be in use today, but each of these has a story behind it that can only be heard at the Colby-Curtis Museum. (Gordon Lambie/CBC)

Instead of trying to find these hidden stories in local history books, Lavorel said they took a new approach by inviting local women in to talk.

A group of 13 women, including Bachelder, responded to the call to come to the museum on a regular basis and talk about their mothers and grandmothers.

"We just all get along well and we were happy to share with each other," Bachelder said, reflecting that although she didn't know the other women involved at the start of the process, they have all grown close through the workshops.

A new stance for the museum

Samuel Gaudreau-Lalande, the director of the Colby-Curtis Museum, said that the approach is a part of a bigger shift in the culture of the museum.

Given that anyone can find information online in a matter of minutes, Gaudreau-Lalande says that museums need to rethink what brings people in their doors, and how they tell their stories.

"You have to open up, let go of your expertise and then try to understand the perspective of this person," the museum director said, underlining the fact that this co-creation approach relies on building a relationship of trust with the community.

Colby-Curtis Museum curator Marie-Charlotte Franco, exhibit curator Marie Lavorel and museum director Samuel Gaudreau-Lalande worked on The Caregivers together. (Gordon Lambie/CBC)

In the case of The Caregivers, Gaudreau-Lalande pointed out that the museum was already in possession of the archives of many of the branches of the Women's Institute in the county as well as a large number of historical artifacts. But he said the stories of these women, their involvement in these groups and the ways that they used the objects make the exhibit come to life for visitors.

"This is how this process is totally different than reading information about an object in a catalog notice and then putting it in the little card that people will read on the wall," he said.

"It's different because there's someone to tell the story."

The Caregivers is on display at the Colby-Curtis Museum in Stanstead until May 23, 2025.