A Trip Back In Time
Burying the new time capsule.
Items from the old time capsule.
Outwardly, I blended in with the crowd and appeared calm, but inside I was excited. I was going to a ceremony. A time capsule ceremony. I had never been witness to such an event before and I could hardly wait for the start time to arrive. I had arrived early, not knowing how long it might take me to find parking in downtown Red Deer. There were about 5 other people on site when I arrived. The snow was beginning to fall again.
I had time to notice the snowflakes and be amazed at each beautiful design, which added even more excitement to the little girl inside me. I found a good spot to stand and soon there were hundreds of people joining me. It was a privilege to stand beside an elderly lady who had been to the City’s time capsule ceremony 50 years previous back in 1963. The ceremony opened with us turning ourselves to face the Canadian flag flying on the City Hall building. I had to choke back on some anthem words because of the excitement still welling up inside of me. After a few short speeches by various VIPs, I think the chilly weather that day helped with that aspect, it was time for the crane to lower the big metal time capsule into it’s resting place.
Janice Rypstra in front of the burial.
We were then directed to walk over to the library and into the Snell auditorium for the opening of the 1963 capsule. It was standing room only. The Mayor was finally able to make his way through the crowd and up to the table. It was so thrilling to be able to watch the Mayor open the small box and show us the contents, piece by piece; it was like opening birthday presents! The most exciting artifacts to me were the document proclaiming the official first 50 years of the city status from 1913 – 1963, 8track tapes that held radio news, a floppy hard disc drive holding Red Deer Advocate news and a mini microfilm reel which held news from Red Deer’s TV station from way back then. Hopefully the city still has such antique machines to use in order to retrieve the news from them! The ceremony was complete with cupcakes for all. To find out more about Red Deer’s 100th City Status Birthday celebrations happening all year long, visit www.reddeer2013.ca