THE SHAW 10 COMMUNITY COLLECTION

A trove of local treasures

From the mid 1980s to the late 1990s, the Shaw Cable company produced a local news program highlighting community events, people of interest, and snippets of everyday Nelson life.  The program ran on the Shaw 10 Community channel which ran every night.  The tapes, totalling over 500 in mostly VHS, SVHS and Umatic formats, have been stored away for decades, slowly degrading and with them, the memories they contain.  

The Nelson Museum began digitizing and archiving the Shaw 10 tapes in 2023, thanks in part to grants received from the Museums Assistance Program and the Columbia Basin Trust. To date, more than 200 VHS tapes have been converted into digital format, and over 140 individual programs have been uploaded to the Museum’s YouTube channel, to be access free of charge by the community.

Much of the footage includes some very recognizable faces and prominent figures from the community, and has brought back some great memories – a young Judy Wapp performing at the Selkirk College SubPub; the 1988 Sno-Fest; and many Capitol Theatre musical and theatrical performances. Yet, some of the people, places, and events in the footage remain a mystery. If you can help identify some of the unknown people in the films, please contact the Archivist at collections@nelsonmuseum.ca