'The power of nostalgia': N.B. archivist creates highway time machine

It’s like going back in time.

The Provincial Archives of New Brunswick (PANB) has uploaded dozens of dashboard camera videos from the 1970s to their YouTube channel.

They are highway survey videos from the Department of Transportation to determine the state of the roads.

PANB archivist Rob Gemmell has been painstakingly transferring old film to digital files.

“I was born in 1982, so this all pre-dates me, so anything before me is pretty interesting,” said Gemmell.

Since 1994, 367 reels of 166mm film have been sitting on the shelf in Fredericton.

Now, 30 years later, Gemmell has begun to show New Brunswickers a glimpse into their past.

Provincial Archives of New Brunswick has uploaded dozens of dashboard camera videos from the 1970s to their YouTube channel. (Source: PANB)

He wanted to start sooner, but the technology wasn’t quite where he wanted it to be.

“It was a project I wanted to work on, but it was just one of those things, we just didn’t have the means to present it in a way that I thought it should have been presented,” he said.

Gemmell has uploaded 35 videos to the PANB YouTube channel so far with more to come as soon as next week.

He tries to transfer a handful of films to video each week, but he does have other work responsibilities.

“It would be nice to be able to just spend all day digitizing these and uploading them every day but there’s a balance,” said Gemmell.

He knew people would be fascinated and is well aware there are a lot of Facebook groups that share historical photos and video.

“The power of nostalgia comes into play as well for those who lived through the moment,” he said.

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