Sylvan Lake residents will be taken back in time on Saturday, and given a chance to see what life in town was like 25 years ago.
A time capsule buried at the community centre in 1988 was recently unearthed. Its contents will be displayed at the town office beginning at 12 p.m. Saturday.
Showing the capsule’s items will be particularly meaningful for Michelle Wright (Coppens) — a former Sylvan Lake resident responsible for putting the capsule together while leading a Sylvan Lake peer support group as a 19-year-old.
“It was the 75th anniversary of Sylvan Lake at that time, and we had different activities that we did,” she said. “One of them was to put together a time capsule from the youth of 1988 to the youth of 2013.”
Included in the capsule were items meant to offer an insight into life at the time — a scrapbook, phone book and a video made by young people, as well as letters they wrote outlining future goals.
These items will be displayed and the video will be shown.
“Technology 25 years ago was a lot different,” said Wright. “It was just hilarious because (the video) is VHS, and at that time you couldn’t really edit, so you can see that.”
Wright and other members of the peer support group viewed the video, and examined the capsule’s other contents, on Sunday. In the video, the youths — most of whom were in their early teens — act out the top ten movies of the time, and tour H.J. Cody School.
The phone book allows people to see “what a small community (Sylvan Lake) was at that time”, according to Wright.
Members of the group were recently summoned after the capsule was unearthed in June. The unearthing process wasn’t publicized due to fears that the capsule’s contents would be damaged or destroyed.
Wright is excited to finally be able to share its contents, including the video, with today’s residents.
“You just see youth sharing youth,” she said. “We didn’t have any earth-shattering things to share, but we shared as youth what would have been important.”