Helen Cade’s Museum Project
Senior museum member and long-time resident Helen Cade is assembling a record of Clinton’s Citizen of the Year Award for the Clinton Museum. Helen’s current project is in the working stage and she wishes to create an accurate record of the award, and a true account of people she has known here. This award started in 1972 and the intervening years have seen a lot of change.
Helen herself arrived here in 1952 from Ashcroft as a young teacher to marry rancher Charles Dougherty. Later she married Bud Cade.
Among many other details, she can remember when Clinton hosted three hotels including the original Cariboo Lodge, the Frontier Hotel and the famous Clinton Hotel. Each was destroyed by fire. (A mobile display for the model of the Clinton Hotel is currently underway by Museum volunteers with funding from the Archie and Dorothy McLaughlin Memorial Fund administered by the BC Interior Community Foundation).
Helen has been welcoming visitors and new volunteers with her warm and gracious presence at the museum for many years along with polishing the silver on our annual Museum clean-up days.
With this project, Helen hopes to preserve some of the history that individual citizen’s have made to our Village over the past 50 years.
If you have any pictures of previous Citizen of the Year ceremonies, Helen would love to include them. Please contact her through info@clintonmuseumbc.org or call 250 459 2442.
DID YOU KNOW, THE CLINTON MUSEUM IS HIRING FOR FULL AND PART TIME EMPLOYMENT?
The positions funded by the Canada Youth Grant are available to persons younger than 30 years of age.
The Museum is preparing to open early in June. Please contact info@clintonmuseumbc.org, call 250 459 2442 or visit our website or Facebook pages.
Clinton Museum receives Archie and Dorothy McLaughlin Fund
Archie and Dorothy (nee Elliot) McLaughlin moved to Clinton in 1950 and established a four car taxi service in the village. Few owned cars in those days and the taxi provided a valuable service to surrounding ranches and mills. The business was sold to Peggy Oats in 1955.
Both Archie and Dorothy were very active within their community.
For many years Dorothy was the secretary and activity coordinator for the Clinton and District Agricultural Society (the organization responsible for the maintenance and operation of the Memorial Hall until it was taken over by the Village) and secretary for the local Legion branch. She was also the Clinton reporter for the Ashcroft Journal, Clinton Cache Creek Pioneer and the 100 Mile Free Press. Much of the documented history of the Clinton Annual Ball and stories of pioneering local families was compiled by her as a supplement to the local paper. An active member of the OORP she was a consistent fund raiser for many charities. Dorothy McLaughlin was selected as Citizen of the year in 1987. As Helen Cade remembers, Dorothy wrote a lot about others but very little was written about her.
Archie volunteered in the Elks (BPOE), the local Legion Branch 194, the Annual Ball and Rodeo weekend and other community events.
He was a School Trustee for School District 30 for many years in the 60s and 70s and a member of the board of Cariboo College, the predecessor of Thompson Rivers University (TRU). In 2009, The Archie McLaughlin Memorial Bursary was established to recognize his service with the college. The Bursary is awarded annually to a student from School District 74 who has completed at least one year at TRU and is continuing studies there.
In 2021, the South Cariboo Historical Society (Clinton Museum) received the Archie and Dorothy McLaughlin Memorial Fund held at the BC Interior Community Foundation.
The donation of $2500 will be used by Museum Volunteers to preserve the Clinton Hotel Model and establish a mobile display. Thank you to the Clinton Senior Citizen’s Home Society, Legion Branch 194, New Pathways to Gold, and The Village of Clinton for their support of our application.