The Swift Current Museum will open its doors to the public today for the first time in just over five months due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

March 20 was the last day they were open and things will be a little bit different upon reopening including all visitors will be required to wear masks and the museum will be shifting their programs to an online format.

The Lunch & Learn program will now be taped and put online for the public to view along with the ability to do virtual tours of the museum. The option to watch all 17 history videos they've created over the past eight years will be online accessible too.

Swift Current Museum's Director and Curator Lloyd Begley said it will be a bit of a change of pace for his staff as they've been working behind closed doors since the shutdown but are thrilled to be opening.

"We're excited, it's been a while, and we're always excited to see people from our community visiting our museum and learning about our collections and our stories," he said.

The museum's collection has grown during its closure with piles of photographs and textual items that have been given to them, and Begley was quick to point out a pair of items, in particular, that caught his attention.

"A number of photographs dealing with the Second World War and the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan here in Swift Current at our airport," he said. "It was number 39 Service Flying Training School which operated here between November 1941 and closed down in the spring of 1943. We've had a number of photographs come in from family members whose grandparents worked at the airport during that period.

"We've received an interesting map that dates back to before 1892 of Railway Avenue here in Swift Current it was done by someone that worked with the CPR. He actually corresponded with a school teacher, that he actually lived next door to her on Railway in a CPR bunkhouse. She taught in the first school in Swift Current, which was a boxcar."

The letter was found by an antique bookseller recently in a book in British Columbia and he sent them into the museum.

Photo courtesy of Lloyd Begley