Hope shares her passion for local history with online group

By Alexandra Noad - Lethbridge Herald Local Journalism Initiative Reporter on January 15, 2025.

Herald photo by Alexandra Noad Hope Wilke Wiebe, founder of the Memories of Lethbridge and Area Facebook page, holds a picture of coal miners of Lethbridge in 1940, which her father was a part.

The common phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words” runs very true for a Lethbridge woman who has been using Facebook as a means to jog people’s memories of the history of the city.

Hope Wilkie Wiebe began the Facebook group Memories of Lethbridge and Area” 10 years ago to show her appreciation to the work her family has done as well as share pictures of memories she had to others.

Wilkie Wiebe’s great-grandfather came to Lethbridge in 1924 from England and her grandfather, James Wilkie, moved to Lethbridge from Prince Edward Island to work for the coal mine.

She says the group is like a bunch of friends and she has seen a few people rekindle their friendships from decades earlier.

“The main idea of the group is for people to remember stuff,” she says, “to interact with each other, to start conversations and to bring people back together who they haven’t seen for 25, 30 or even 40 years and to rekindle that relationship between them.”

With the group Wilkie Wiebe is hoping to keep memories alive, as some of the group members are as old as 99 years.

“I think my oldest is 99 years old and she likes to show her great-grandchildren the pictures going ‘I remember this because I was a young woman at this time,’ so, that’s what tickles me about how the group just does that for everybody.”

In the group, Wilkie Wiebe posts photos every day, including the Herald’s front page of the same day 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago, because she believes people relate strongly to photographs. She says her collection of photographs and newspapers she has on her hard drive is her pride and joy.

“On my external hard drive I’ve got 10,000 photographs now, I have every newspaper from the Herald (until) 2014 that I’ve saved,” she says. “That’s my pride and joy, when I pass away it will probably be given to the Lethbridge Historical Society.”

Wilkie Wiebe has notice younger people are eager to learn the history of Lethbridge, something she is ecstatic about.

“I’ve really noticed that the young are really coming in to take pride in it, even if they have not lived (very long), I have people that have moved here, went to university here that have joined the group because they want to learn more about Lethbridge.”

While she isn’t a historian, Wilkie Wiebe describes herself as a Northside girl who takes pride in Lethbridge and her family’s legacy.