Behind The Scenes With Sabrina

🌸 Behind The Scenes With Sabrina 🌸

        First off HI , I'm Sabrina Merks, resident of Dutton and I'll be attending St. Lawrence College for musical theatre performance in the fall. You may have seen me in the Elgin County area wearing many hats, such as volunteer at The West Elgin Dramatic Society or have seen me as one of the cashiers at Dutton Foodland, or even possibly as current reining Miss Elgin County Globe. I spent my past year at Sheridan College in the performing arts program and I'm excited to be Assistant Museum Manager for the summer. 

        I started here at the Backus -Page House Museum just this Tuesday and oh boy, has it been a wild week of adventures. When I  started I was greeted by amazing staff members and was off on my first real task of the job…. clean the bathroom in at the lookout. The experience of being at the lookout is beautiful, the trees and plants and the view, but the look of the washrooms, absolutely terrifying,  the state of fish flies was unbearable, I could hardly breathe. I would step away from the washrooms, take a deep breath and charge in the porcelain mess that was the Provincial Park washrooms. The rest of the day seemed to go by without a hitch which made me happy. Later that day I actually came back after hours because we had some mediums come for a group tour. Mediums are people who are in contact with the spirits of the dead and communicate between the dead and the living. While they were here they gave us interesting insight into the past of the Backus-Page House Museum.

      Second day on the job, Wednesday, I have the keys in my hand, go to open the museum, run over to disable to the alarm, don’t hit the buttons fast enough. Set off the alarm. I then tried to get into the office. Hit a wrong button again, both the museum and the office alarms are going off.... I was terrified. A bunch of thoughts were running through my head, (OH NO im gonna get fired! Angela is gonna be so mad! Delany is gonna be so mad at me! WHAT IF THE COPS SHOW UP??). Luckily Delany came to the rescue and helped me call the alarm company and disable both alarms. She made sure that I knew everyone has set off the alarm before, and that now im officially an employee! It was also Weed and Wine Wednesdays which is when the volunteers all come, and help pull weeds, and we plant and water the gardens so they look stunning for all the visitors we have. Now we probably spent an hour or so pulling weeds before we gave up and needed to go inside into the air conditioning. The rest of the day was relatively quiet and I managed to get some work done.

    

        Thursday was a particularly quiet day so I set myself out on an adventure with my camera, I walked around the whole park, gathering videos and images of our beautiful landscape. One of the jobs I have at the Museum and park is to create video advertisements for multiple events and facilities the museum offers. One of which is weddings. So I was able to get some great footage of the park and I spent the day editing the footage and creating the video, which we then posted on our Youtube and Facebook page.

     

           Friday was a fairly interesting day, Catie Welch our president of the Tyrconnell  Heritage Society brought Angela overalls, unfortunately there was a huge tear in the backdoor of the pants, so I spent my morning hemming and sewing her pants to wear for Living History Weekend. Then I was roped into filling 100 WW1 replica sandbags with wood chips. We spent 2.5 hours filling them and then dropping them off at our new replica ww1 trench. The only way the 3 of us could all fit in Delany's car with the sand bags inside was for Catie to lay on top and have her legs sticking out of the window.  By the end of the 2.5 hours, Catie, Delany and myself were drenched in sweat and covered in dirt and dust.  It was a very eventful Friday, I went home and showered right away.

 

      

       Saturday, Angela and I spent the day in the museum doing work while there was a birthday party happening in the office. We are going to be having a booth at the Dutton Dunwich Canada 150 Celebration. We will be there from 1-6 on July 1st, with a selfie booth and a ton of fun activities. So come check us out!

      Well thats what my week has been like! Come check out the blog next week to hear about fun activities coming up and Living History Weekend!

Thanks for reading

Sabrina Merks