The black-and-white scenes unfold at a brisk clip, the people and places rushing past in a stream of images recorded on a hand-cranked movie camera more than 70 years ago.

Anita Miles, collections manager at the Orillia Museum of Art and History, can’t keep from smiling.

“I’m not sure whether to take my jaw off the floor or leave it there,” Miles said only half-jokingly.

“It is absolutely fabulous stuff.”

The vintage film is among dozens of 16-millimetre reels, shot by a local man between the late 1920s and early 1950s and donated to the downtown museum several years ago.

Only now are their contents fully coming to light, as staff sets in motion the process that will lead to their careful preservation.

“The record that is left here is absolutely fantastic,” Miles added during an interview this week.

The antique reels – nearly 50 in all – were given to the museum by the Couchiching Conservancy in 2003.

The non-profit group discovered the cinematic stash in a country home owned by the family of the late Lewis Grant, who purchased the rural property, now known as Grant’s Woods, in 1909.

The property was donated to the conservancy in 2002, and with it came the films.

“We thought it was something that should be in the museum,” said executive director Ron Reid.

“We were really pleased they wanted them.”

The independently wealthy Grant, whose access to a movie camera was a rarity for the day, shot a majority of the films, Miles said.

Each reel runs 10 to 15 minutes in length, the images flickering by in randomly collected snippets that offer a visual diary of Orillia as it once was.

We see men harvesting apples in the 1930s and children playing with firecrackers or shoveling snow.

Elsewhere, a locomotive storms past the camera in a huff of steam.

“Railway buffs are going to be thrilled with that,” Miles added.

Horses figure prominently, too.

In one clip, the elegant animals are seen racing around a makeshift track on the icy surface of Lake Couchiching; in another, a horse-drawn wagon loaded with lumber glides along a city street blanketed with snow.

“Look at the breath on the horses,” Miles said, remarking on the clarity of the images.

Grant often turned his lens on the natural world – a spider web illuminated by the sun; snow crystals forming on the ground or a squirrel navigating a tree branch.

About half of the 48 reels bear some link to Orillia’s past, and range from the everyday – children hamming it up for the camera or curious onlookers gathering to watch a house fire – to the comical – men in one-piece bathing suits preparing for a winter plunge in Lake Couchiching.

And there is Grant, hacking down a tree that will later appear in the family’s livingroom, draped in Christmas decorations.

Downtown businesses that were long ago erased from the streetscape make appearances, too, among them Carter’s Grill, the Princess Theatre and Liggett’s drugstore.

Other films document Grant’s travels abroad, including a trip to the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany.

“There is a lot of stuff that is cosmopolitan in nature,” Miles added.

The Sir Sam Steele Building, today home to the museum, is here, too, filmed inside and out when it still served as the local post office.

“This is a fabulous treasure,” Miles added of the collection.

The already brittle filmstrips were transferred from their original metal canisters to ventilated containers to slow the deterioration that results from the buildup of gases produced by acetate.

The museum is now preparing to have them transferred to a digital format to ensure this rich collection of images is preserved for future generations.

At a cost of about $100 per reel, “it is a sizable chunk of change,” Miles said.

The museum is inviting residents with an appreciation for the past to donate toward the preservation effort.

Those who give $100 will receive a DVD copy of one film. “If we don’t transfer them now, we are going to lose them forever,” Miles added. “I want to know that information is going to be around.”