For the Cortes Island Museum & Archives Society (CIMAS), 2006 was a mixture of exciting new opportunities and profound sadness at the untimely loss of Doreen Thompson, who played such an important role on our Board and in the creation of numerous major exhibits.

Back by popular demand, the exhibit "Memories of Manson's Landing" continued to captivate museum visitors. Photos, artefacts and stories presented the settlement history of Manson's Landing from 1890 to 1970. A collection of First Nation Artefacts, loaned by museum members also remained on display. This year, too, a new natural history exhibit was created by Laurel Bohart, a local taxidermist and naturalist. The exhibit featured mounts of birds and small mammals commonly found on Cortes. As part of the community outreach project, Cortes Island School coordinator, Bonnie MacDonald, involved the school this year in a natural history project on the geology of the island.

The Archives Committee worked this year on a project to preserve historic photographs of Cortes and nearby islands, making digital copies of photographs from various collections.

For the full report, click on the following link.