Submission to Island Heritage Study

By - PEI Advisory Council on the Status of Women

This full submission is available. A summation of the key recommendations is included here:

"We know that many ideas and priorities have come out of the province-wide public consultations already. The following are the kinds of initiatives and investments that the Advisory Council on the Status of Women would strongly endorse.

Shorter-term projects:

• Investment in public art in public spaces by women and men. This should include creation of public monuments and memorials that focus on women's history.
• Increased investment in contemporary arts and culture. This should include increased support for existing institutions, such as the PEI Council of the Arts, and initiatives, such as the craft Buyers' Markets, that provide grants to artists and artisans and that assist them in making a livable income from their work.
• Multi-year, stable provincial government support for local publishing projects that illuminate our small Island's past and our contemporary circumstances in non-fiction, fiction, and poetry for adults and for children.
• Specific support for arts programs and arts presence in the schools — including supports for arts educators (many of whom are women), for supplies and space, and for artists-in-the schools — to give Island young people maximum inspiration to apply their creativity.
• Support for doing and debating inclusive historicals research in academia and in the wider community.
• Investment in sustainable and beautiful affordable housing — creating heritage buildings for tomorrow that make people's lives better today.

Longer-term projects:

• A provincial museum, supported by a well-maintained and well-staffed artifactory, in a location designed to benefit local people first and to tourists second. This is needed notwithstanding the value and quality of the seven provincial museum sites and should be an addition to, not a replacement of, these sites.
• Consideration of the role and value of a maintaining a specialized focus in part of or all of a provincial museum. Groups advocating for a children's museum have insight into what benefits this could bring, as do proponents of a museum of natural history. (Either or both of these focuses could merit — or even require — an independent museum site, and this is well worth exploring.)
• A provincial art gallery to collect and exhibit arts and crafts from the Island's past and present."

Our natural history: a neglected part of our heritage

BY DWAINE OAKLEY
Guest opinion as published by The Guardian March 15, 2008

The Natural History Society of Prince Edward Island would like to see more focus on the Island’s natural history as the IRIS group moves forward in understanding and making recommendations on heritage in Prince Edward Island.

There is a massive natural history component to Prince Edward Island that has largely been neglected to date. The Natural History Society of P.E.I. would like to ensure that any future recommendations that the IRIS group comes up with include this neglected aspect of our heritage.

The society commends the achievements by the P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundation and community museums, despite their lack of resources, for their performance in the delivery of various parts of the conservation of our cultural history. However, the mandate of the P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundation is to study, collect, preserve, interpret, and protect the human and natural heritage of Prince Edward Island for the use, benefit and enjoyment of the people of the province.

In the past, the P.E.I. Natural History Society of 1889-1903 pressured the government to establish a provincial museum of natural history, with its efforts culminating in a 1901 petition signed by 131 of the more prominent and influential citizens of the day. It is high time that a natural history museum be developed on P.E.I. as part of the museum and heritage system.

This natural history museum must have a dedicated curator and support staff to conduct systematic collecting of specimens, and a mandate to deliver educational programs to school, college, and university students and faculty, Islanders and tourists. This museum must have an appropriate structure to tell our Island’s natural history from its formation to the present day. In addition, this facility should ideally be located where it has representative habitats adjacent to the museum, so that the past can be tied to present habitats.

The delivery of the government’s natural history mandate must address methods to encourage citizen participation in biological surveys (online citizen science data collection systems), improve the identification skills of Islanders and visitors, and conserve unique and rare habitats and species.

Many of the Society’s members attended the various focus groups around the Island, and have been commenting on an individual basis on the IRIS group’s website blog. It is hoped that the interest in this aspect of our heritage is shared by all Islanders and that we will soon see the natural history of P.E.I. on display for all to see.

BY DWAINE OAKLEY

The Natural History Society of Prince Edward Island would like to see more focus on the Island’s natural history as the IRIS group moves forward in understanding and making recommendations on heritage in Prince Edward Island.

There is a massive natural history component to Prince Edward Island that has largely been neglected to date. The Natural History Society of P.E.I. would like to ensure that any future recommendations that the IRIS group comes up with include this neglected aspect of our heritage.

The society commends the achievements by the P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundation and community museums, despite their lack of resources, for their performance in the delivery of various parts of the conservation of our cultural history. However, the mandate of the P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundation is to study, collect, preserve, interpret, and protect the human and natural heritage of Prince Edward Island for the use, benefit and enjoyment of the people of the province.

In the past, the P.E.I. Natural History Society of 18891903 pressured the government to establish a provincial museum of natural history, with its efforts culminating in a 1901 petition signed by 131 of the more prominent and influential citizens of the day. It is high time that a natural history museum be developed on P.E.I. as part of the museum and heritage system.

This natural history museum must have a dedicated curator and support staff to conduct systematic collecting of specimens, and a mandate to deliver educational programs to school, college, and university students and faculty, Islanders and tourists. This museum must have an appropriate structure to tell our Island’s natural history from its formation to the present day. In addition, this facility should ideally be located where it has representative habitats adjacent to the museum, so that the past can be tied to present habitats.

The delivery of the government’s natural history mandate must address methods to encourage citizen participation in biological surveys (online citizen science data collection systems), improve the identification skills of Islanders and visitors, and conserve unique and rare habitats and species.

Many of the Society’s members attended the various focus groups around the Island, and have been commenting on an individual basis on the IRIS group’s website blog. It is hoped that the interest in this aspect of our heritage is shared by all Islanders and that we will soon see the natural history of P.E.I. on display for all to see.

Whale bones can't stay in P.E.I.: museum official

As published by CBC.ca news Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Prince Edward Island does not have the resources to keep and display a blue whale skeleton that will instead go to British Columbia, says the director of the provincial museum foundation.

The whale washed ashore near Tignish in western P.E.I. in 1987 and was buried nearby. Representatives of a new biodiversity centre at the University of British Columbia recently exhumed part of the whale to assess its condition. They will return in the spring to complete the exhumation and prepare the bones for shipping to the west coast.

There's no place on the Island to display such a large mammal, David Keenlyside, director of the P.E.I Museum and Heritage Foundation, told CBC News Tuesday.

"It's always disappointing when you can't keep your heritage at home," he said.

"But you can't save everything, and you just have to plan for these things. It's a logistic challenge, for sure, given the weight and size of it. I'm just happy that it found a good home."

Although the province has no immediate plans for a provincial heritage museum, Keenlyside said he'd like to see the government create a facility capable of displaying the bones of large mammals.