Oh, the stories they could tell

Crescentwood

An inevitable new year’s question is “What are you leaving behind?”

While that query usually refers to the old year just ended, and all its sad and bad news, in my world it also means the ephemera that I find left between the pages of books donated to the Children’s Hospital Book Market, where I am a volunteer

For the next few columns, I’ll be playing detective while doing community outreach by researching some of the things I have found in books. If you know the backstory behind photos I’ll be sharing, do tell me. Since the last time I wrote about this, the collection of material we have found has grown exponentially.

While it’s one thing to forget something used as a bookmark, it’s quite another to declutter when downsizing and dispose of things that, at first glance, are deemed unnecessary. The Baby Boomers who tossed their old school yearbooks now want them back. Reliving one’s childhood and adolescence when life was much simpler has become a stock conversation starter for a certain generation beginning with, “Do you remember…?”

The older Neil Young gets, the more a yearbook I have – featuring him in Grade 9 at Crescentwood’s Earl Grey School – increases in value, according to antique dealers. I laugh when I realize that young folks have no idea what an ink blotter is. Each item from our past is a story onto itself and is part of our collective. interconnected web. One picture can indeed be worth a thousand words, as that snapshot may be a portal that makes history come alive.

These forgotten treasures serve as glimpses into people’s lives in times gone by. The items that garner the most oohs and aahs are the photographs. Even though pictures used as bookmarks are often forgotten between pages, rest assured those folks are not forgotten. Is that you? Do you recognize someone in the collection of photos featured with this column? Other than a stamp that says Brigden’s Photographers, Winnipeg, on the back of the cross-legged gentlemen, there few names or dates to provide clues to identity.

If you have a story to tell about something you found something in a public library book or a tome from a Little Free Library, or perhaps in a book purchased at a garage sale or rescued during Giveaway Weekend, and you would like to share the story, drop me a line with a photo of the item and we can explore what was left behind. My email address is heather.emberley@gmail.com