PORT HOOD: Historical societies and museums in Inverness County want the municipality to help establish a central archive.
Representing Inverness County’s heritage and culture sector, John and Cathy Gillies noted that the Municipality of the County of Inverness will celebrate its 200th anniversary in 2024.
“It might be an opportunity for the County of Inverness to consider maybe some single project that would benefit the whole county,” John suggested during the regular monthly meeting on Jan. 12.
The Inverness County groups held a conference on Dec. 2 at Beinn Mhabu, noted John. There were three roundtable discussions at the conference, which was attended by 25 people, he said.
“We had representation from museums and heritage societies in all six municipal districts there,” he said.
Because the organizations rely on volunteers, John said they need to constantly fundraise but that was almost impossible during the global pandemic.
“We looked at the challenges and opportunities that are facing museums and heritage societies in Inverness County. It was trying to revive, after COVID-19, fundraising, and the fact that all our work is being done by volunteers, were some of the challenges that we saw,” he said. “We also saw opportunities to come together as a museum community in Inverness County. We had a second roundtable discussion looking at ways in which the Municipality of Inverness County might be of assistance to the heritage museum and culture community.”
One idea that arose from the discussions was reviving the Municipal Heritage Advisory Committee, John said.
“It did a lot of work in terms of built heritage and designating houses and building in Inverness County as heritage properties,” he said. “We can see this heritage committee as being composed of staff, councillors, plus people from the heritage community.”
John said the conference also developed a three-year plan for the heritage community.
Another recommendation from the conference was to ask the municipality to make a recreation and tourism department employee responsible for heritage and culture, John said. He said another topic surrounded the establishment of a municipal fund.
“That would include infrastructure, but even more importantly, we thought programs and other initiatives. Because we are all volunteers, it’s difficult to get time to put on, or initiate, projects and programs within the community,” John said. “If the municipality would consider setting aside a fund which museums and heritage groups could apply for, on a competitive basis, to get funding.”
The main recommendation from the conference dealt specifically with an archive that would provide genealogical information, and serve as a gathering place for books written by Inverness County authors, said John.
“That was the one topic that received unanimous support from all tables in terms of seeing the need for a central Inverness County archive that would be a service to the museum and heritage community,” he said.
John said this suggestion dates back to the first conference of museum and heritage groups in 2002.
Cathy said there are only a few counties in Nova Scotia that have such an archive, and in Cape Breton, the only such facility is the Beaton Institute in Sydney.
“When we think of records – there could be documents, they could be visual, they could be photographic, those kinds of things – they are constantly being created by businesses, organizations, cultural groups, counties,” she said. “Then they accumulate, and then people wonder, ‘what do we do with them,’ and every once in a while when people don’t know what to do with them, they go out, they get trashed. But there are important documents that can be kept.”
Not just preserving history, Cathy said it’s equally important that it be done locally.
“Ideally, you want to preserve those records as close as possible where they’re created. If we have records that are created in Inverness County, we would like to keep them in Inverness County, otherwise, if they’re important they go to Sydney, or they go to Halifax,” she said. “If they’re local records, the public Archives of Nova Scotia, they have many records from all over the province but they accumulate. If you have a facility locally, many of those records could go back to where they were created.”
As an example, Cathy said the Chestico Museum and Archives dedicated a space within the facility for archival material.
“Basically, the records that we have are our own. Most other museums and heritage groups don’t have the facility and don’t have the staff that know how to manage those records,” she noted. “We have had some staff training, a number of people have taken workshops that have been available through the Association of Nova Scotia Museums, and the Council of Nova Scotia Archives. This is a project that our museum has been working on for a number of years. We’re trying to follow those principles.”
If and when such an archive is established, District 5 Councillor Lynn Chisholm suggested it be named in honour of late local historian and author Jim St. Clair.
“It’s important to know where we come from so we know where we’re going,” District 2 Councillor Blair Phillips added.
In response to a question from District 4 Councillor John MacLennan, John said there are many museums in the municipality that already contain archival information.
“In Margaree, you have the salmon museum, in Mabou you got the Gaelic and historical society, the emphasis is on Gaelic. In Judique, you have the Celtic music centre,” he noted. “You have themed museums and they’ve collected a lot of good information. It’s not asking where there is an existing facility; it’s to let the archival material to remain there. It’s to have a central Inverness County archives where there’s no place to put things.”
As an example, John said records that date back to when Port Hood was a town were sent to the dump in the 1960s.
“There was just no facility at all,” he recalled. “In homes in all your districts, there’s a lot of valuable material.”
Cathy said another advantage of a central archive is hiring someone who can determine what is worth saving.
“If you have small museum in your community, or you’re gathering information on genealogy, and we have someone trained as an archivist, then that person would be consulted,” she said. “We’re not saying everybody has to give up their records, but say an organization folds and they want to donate their records to a central archive, that’s something that could be done.”