Creston & District Archives

The Archives is able to respond to requests for information on a wide variety of topics. Most of our requests are genealogical in nature, and a good number seek the history of a particular building, organisation, or even street in the Valley.

Requests are welcomed in person, by phone, fax, mail, or email. Click here for contact information and location map. Requests are answered in the order they are received; we try to get a response back within two weeks. However, depending on the volume of requests received, the availability of volunteers researchers, and the complexity of the request, replies may take longer. When requesting information, please be as specific as possible; the more details you can provide, the easier it will be for us to give you an answer. For example, if you are looking for information about an event that happened in the Creston area, try to give us as accurate a date as possible: “May or June 1947” is much more manageable than “sometime in the 1940s.”

Birth, Marriage, Death Indexes Partial genealogical indexes are now available online in PDF format – see for yourself whether we have that obituary you’re looking for! The articles themselves are not yet online; to order a copy, please read the section on “Research Fees” below and send us an email (archives@crestonmuseum.ca).

We do charge fees for research services. These fees help cover the cost of staff time for research and the cost of mantaining the collections so that they are available to you. Thank you for your understanding.

$2.00 per hour. This fee is applied to researchers who use the microfilm machine themselves; the $15.00 per hour research fee does not apply in these cases. If Archives staff use the microfilm on behalf of researchers, the $15.00 per hour fee is applied.

$10 per record (birth, death, or marriage announcement). This fee includes a black-and-white photocopy or unedited, 300dpi scan of the newspaper article, delivered by mail or email. Additional reproduction fees do not apply unless a better-quality reproduction is requested.

$15 research fee per every ten photos, plus reproduction costs as follows:

$15.00 per hour. This fee is applied to all research conducted by our staff. Generally, we ask only a donation for requests that take less than half an hour to complete. Reproduction costs for photographs or documents are additional, as follows:

Contact us to request documents

– Copies will be nade only in accordance with Canadian copyright law, and only if the archival material can be safely copied.
– Reproduction costs stated above reflect actual costs to the Archives, and are subject to change without notice.
– A minimum $2.00 shipping charge, or actual shipping costs (whichever is greater), will be added to all copies sent via regular mail. Copies requiring special packaging, additional postage above Canadian lettermail rates, international shipping, or priority shipping will be charged actual costs.
– Reproductions of larger documents and maps may be available. Reproduction methods, quality, and costs will vary; please discuss your request with Archives staff.
– Some documents are too fragile to be copied. In addition, Creston Valley Advance newspapers from 1991-1998, inclusive, are only available in bound volumes that cannot be separated. Articles printed along the inside column of the pages, nearest the spine, will not photocopy clearly. Typed transcriptions may be the only reproduction method available for these articles. Archives staff will advise you before making the transcriptions if this is the only reproduction method available.
– We recommend colour photocopies and laser copies, even of black-and-white photos. The colour process results in much clearer detail than the black-and-white process.