Welcome to One Hour in the Past, a podcast series presented by the St. Catharines Museum and Welland Canals Centre.

Have you ever noticed that a simple information search can lead you in strange and wonderful directions? As in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, historical research can lead you down a winding rabbit hole that might take you off your original path and lead you to new and amazing historical places!

This podcast series starts with that premise! Adrian Petry, Visitors Services Coordinator and Kathleen Powell, Supervisor of Historical Services and Curator, both from the St. Catharines Museum and Welland Canals Centre, have challenged each other to explore the weird and wonderful places that one hour of research on a topic will take them. Join them as they share their findings!

The Mystery Continues

This season we’re keeping the mystery alive. We had such fun last season trying to guess the theme that links the topics of our episodes, we’re doing it again. But this season, it’s Adrian’s turn to try and stump Kathleen! All our episodes will have one common theme that will be revealed at the end of the season. At the same time, Kathleen will not be aware of our full season of topics ahead of time and will have to try and guess what that common theme is once we get to the end of the season.

803 – The Route Reference Computer

How does the mail get sorted? One of the first computerized and automated mail sorters was the Route Reference Computer. Despite its “state secret” level of confusing technical aspects, we learned a lot about the mail in this episode.

Listen

Footnote

1 – Mail Sorting in 1967

2 – A Chilly Reception for the Postal Code: CBC Archives.

3 – Video – What are the Limits of Human Memory?