Our First MYSTERY BOX TALK is taking place this Friday, May 29th at 7:30PM at the Community Hall in Hopewell Cape. What is a Mystery Box Talk? That's a good question, and to answer it we have to tell a story...

It was a dark and stormy night, (it was February in 2015 when everyday was dark and stormy) at the weekly museum planning meeting, when the Museum Manager, Mr. Donald Alward, indicated he found something unusual in the vault. He said he was going through the vault looking for a specific item, when he came upon 13 stacked totes at the very back.

These thirteen totes have been sitting there for years, untouched and unopened. So, when Donald couldn't find the article he was looking for, he opened one of the boxes in the vault to reveal... a neatly folded flag.

Now this wasn't any old flag; it turns out this was the 1942 Victory Loans flag the county won in the Victory Loans Campaign for that year. Each province in Canada was divided up into districts which were given a fund raising goal to reach, and upon reaching the goal, were given a flag in commemoration. Needless to say Donald was really excited about his find, especially since this year is the 75th Anniversary of the start of the Second World War.

While sitting at the planning session, we started to wonder what could be in the other totes, when someone came up with a novel idea: let's open the totes one at a time at a meeting and then talk about what we find in each box.

After a lengthy discussion on how best to do this, we decided on having a panel of three "experts": Mr. Donald Alward, the Museum's Manager/Curator; Mr. Stuart Liptay, the President of the Albert County Historical Society, and an auctioneer and professional appraiser; and lastly a third mystery guest. The Panel would start the talk off, and then encourage audience participation to further the story.

We decided to have these Mystery Box Talks on the last Friday of the month from May through September, which gives us 2 boxes to open at each talk with 2 remaining (just in-case of a couple of "dud" boxes).

It was also agreed that there would be no peeking before hand, so whatever is in the boxes will remain a mystery until the night of the talk. Who knows what we're going to find!

If you're up for some fun and adventure, and looking to capture that Indiana Jones feeling, we encourage you to come out and find out what's in the box!