Discover Our Stories
There are more than 1,500 research files on different topics in community history as well as nearly 15,000 indexed photographs and a large collection of original community records at the Maple Ridge Community Archives.
This link provides access to our community stories and will be built up over time. If you are looking for information on families, neighbourhoods, community organizations, buildings, and/or businesses then this is a great place to start.
Looking Back – Newspaper Columns
Sheila Nickols began writing her “Looking Back” column for the Maple Ridge – Pitt Meadows NEWS in 1987. She carried on for nearly 30 years, going from weekly to bi-weekly and in later years, sharing writing duties with the museum curator and staff. The column is still being produced with three primary writers – the director and curator of the Maple Ridge Museum and the director of the Pitt Meadows Museum – with occasional contributions by other authors.
Many of Sheila Nickols columns are based on interviews with people who are no longer among us or about buildings that are now long gone. These could not be created today so we will work to keep them available.
Photographic Resources
Maple Ridge Museum has a scanned collection of 15,000 images covering every era and topic of Maple Ridge history. For the purposes of our schools and other interested parties, we have made topical sets of images available on Flickr. The album set includes our original neighbourhoods, local industry, founding families, sports and military service to name just a few. In addition to photographs, some sets also include scans of newspaper clippings and other documents that contribute to the topic in question. Copies of all these materials can be downloaded for personal or classroom use.
For more information or to investigate a particular topic, use our contact form.
Archival & Research Resources
Due to our limited physical space, it is not possible for us to provide researchers with direct access to archives or research materials at the museum. There is a copy of our research files – a set of some 1200 folders – that is located at Maple Ridge Public Library. The set that was at the museum has now been scanned and can be made available in JPG or PDF format.
Use our contact form to let us know the details of your research objectives.
Staff Blog
Our staff consists of both permanent full time, part time, and casual staff, as well as occasional contract archivists, archaeologists and historians. This blog is where you will find their projects and findings and other random finds from the Maple Ridge Museum and Haney House Museum. Have a read, you may just find the information you are looking for here.