A new exhibit at the East Coulee School Museum explores a part of life often overlooked in an industrial town, and that is of the women.
2022 summer student Monica Cimetta has completed a new exhibit in the family room at the East Coulee School Musuem, called the Women of East Coulee and the Family Garden. Largely using existing artifacts in the institution’s vast collection, she has designed a display that shares the history of homelife in a mining town.
“Women of East Coulee were the unsung, unseen heroes of the mining days," said the Executive Director of the East Coulee School Museum Valerie Given. “Our mandate is to preserve the mining history, the family side of the history. We focus on what the kids’ lives look like at school, what the families looked like, and what was their dynamic?”
Cimetta is a third year Archaeology student attending Trent University, Ontario. She was inspired on her first visit to the museum, by seeing the Family Room, which features an entire home from the community rebuilt within the museum.
“It showed the life of the families of East Coulee as a whole, and less of the miners and the children, it shows the background life," said Cimetta.
She interviewed two local women, Linda Gerlinger and Bev Deschenes, and received some valuable background information, learning more about the history.
“In both conversations, they brought up the gardens and how women took huge roles in the gardens,” she said. “It expresses that the women had much bigger roles than being moms, gardens were a huge part of the community, and in that sense, they did bring the community closer together.”
Cimetta says even today, when walking around the community, gardens are still a centrepiece of the yards, and play an important role. She says she even conducted some of her interviews with women in their gardens. The exhibit also tells the stories of individual women in the community past and present.
The display features a large canvas painting, depicting family life, as well as a garden filled with the staples that would have been grown in the early days of the community. It is tied into the home on-site through the artifacts, depicting the dress, social conditions and cultural life of the early mining days.
“As a community comes from one area, especially like East Coulee, which was very Hungarian and Ukrainian, they came together as if they were back home. They brought home here, and they made it their home, and they did that together as a group," said Cimetta.
“The shared culture really helped with the foundation of the East Coulee community,” adds Given.

The Alberta Privacy Commissioner Jill Clayton has ruled the Village of Carbon must respond to the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (FOIP) requests of village residents.
This comes after the Village asked the Privacy Commissioner's Office in two separate requests to disregard access requests to residents. In both cases, the Privacy Commissioner ruled in the requestor’s favour.
The Village requested authorization under section 55(1) of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, which allows a public body to disregard the request “…because of their repetitious or systematic nature, the requests would unreasonably interfere with the operations of the public body or amount to an abuse of the right to make those requests, or, one or more of the requests are frivolous or vexatious.”
In one instance, the Village submitted the applicant is a member of the “Ratepayers of Carbon,” and alleged in their submissions, “The Ratepayers is a group of individuals who both collectively and individually have engaged in a pattern of harassing and obstructing conduct directed at the Municipality’s Council and Administration."
In the second instance, seven requests since 2019 were made by Terry Nash. She has received her requests, except for one request dated February 22 of this year.
The Privacy Commissioner notes in her report she sees no evidence the access requests have been repetitious, and the history of requests does not show the same information is being requested. And while she agrees public bodies responding to access requests uses limited resources, and takes time of the administration staff, she is not satisfied access requests would unreasonably interfere with operations in this instance.
She also ruled the requests were not frivolous or vexatious.
“I have not made any findings as to whether any of the Applicant’s concerns or those of the Ratepayers of Carbon are valid. However, as discussed above, I accept that the Applicant believes her concerns are valid. I have already found, on the basis of the evidence before me, that the purpose of the Applicant’s access request is to obtain access to the information that has been requested. Regardless of the validity of the Applicant’s beliefs, the FOIP Act provided individuals with the right to request access to information, subject to limited and specific exceptions, including financial disclosure that subjects a public body to public scrutiny.”
Nash tells the Mail she has been told she will receive her requests by the end of August.