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Voices from the Past by Reto Tschan, West Vancouver Archivist The impulse to capture and record the human voice and our personal memories is a natural and enduring one. The recent West Vancouver Stories Project illustrates how oral history is alive and well today. Over 35 years ago, the same impulse led Rupert Harrison to record the memories of a number of long-time West Vancouver residents. Now, thanks in part to the funding from the West Vancouver Historical Society, West Vancouver Archives has digitized a large portion of his collection. The bulk of the West Vancouver Archives' oral history collection was created by Rupert Harrison in the years 1979 to 1982 when, newly retired from his duties as Municipal Clerk, Harrison turned his attention to preserving West Vancouver's history. Armed with a tape recorder, Harrison met with leading West Vancouver citizens and long-time residents, including Gertrude Lawson, members of the Thompson family, Frank and Helen Colpitts, Dorothy Whyte (niece of Colonel Whyte) and many others. As a historical record of West Vancouver's past, they are irreplaceable treasures. In the mid 1990s, approximately 6o hours' worth of recordings were copied onto 81 cassettes as access copies. While there is little consensus as to their longevity, it is estimated that the average lifespan for audio cassettes is anywhere between 10 and 30 years. As analog items, repeated playback contributes to their degradation, assuming, that is, that you still have a functioning tape player to hand! Fearing that the originals and copies would continue to deteriorate, and that their content may ultimately become irrecoverable, it was decided to create digital copies. Transferring records to a new format in order to ensure their continued preservation and accessibility is a strategy which archivists term "migration". In the fall, over 42 hours' worth of oral histories were migrated to digital format by Digital Butler in Dundarave. Using the latest technology, not only were copies made, but the sound quality was dramatically improved from the 1990S access copies. Accessible once again, the wealth of information these recordings contain can be made available to researchers to an extent that was formerly not possible. And the voices of West Vancouver's past can speak to us once again. Image captions: 1. above: Some of the original tapes from the Rupert Harrison collection 061.2 2. right:Rupert Harrison, 1999. West Vancouver Archives Collection 3075.WVA.PHO page5