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.

Institute of Island Studies receives Heritage Award

In recognition of an outstanding contribution to the preservation of the heritage of Prince Edward Island, the PEI Museum & Heritage Foundation presented a Heritage Award to the Institute of Island Studies on Heritage Day 2008.

Citation as read at the presentation,

18 February 2008

The possible move of the provincial museum's storage facility - the Artifactory - to a new location in Murray River sparked a debate on the role and function of heritage in our province.

Though the rhetoric and passion displayed were interesting - and even entertaining - to witness, there was the danger that it might amount to just that - rhetoric and passion. But the Institute of Island Studies was able to give the debate some form and shape. By organizing a series of public forums, the Institute was able to focus debate and create an environment where the question became more than the simple one of where the Provincial Museum should have its storage facility. The debate goes on, and we don't yet know where it will lead us, but there is now more public interest in the future of heritage than there has been for many years in our province. An interest that would not be so great - or focused - as it might have been without the Institute's participation. In recognition of this, we are pleased to present a Heritage Award to the Institute of Island Studies.

Preserving our past through public policy

THE FUTURE OF OUR PAST
by MONICA MACDONALD
as published by The Guardian - Feb. 25, 2008

This is the last in a series of three articles meant to encourage and inform public participation in the Island Heritage Study commissioned by the provincial government. As part of the study, The IRIS Group welcomes written briefs at the online address below.

Heritage policies go largely unnoticed, but all levels of government are involved in how we designate our heritage places, how we treat the remains of our past, and how we operate the repositories that hold these remains. What also counts, of course, is how these policies are interpreted, supported and implemented.

Heritage places in Prince Edward Island fall under federal, provincial and municipal jurisdiction. Federal sites, protected by federal legislation and mostly operated by Parks Canada, include both natural and cultural places like the sand dunes at Greenwich and Province House in Charlottetown. Provincial sites come under provincial legislation and the Department of Community, Cultural Affairs and Labour, and are recognized in one of two ways: registration or designation. Registration is honorific and means enlistment on the P.E.I. and Canadian Registers of Historic Places. Designation, though the owner must agree to this status, goes a step further in protection by prohibiting alteration to the exterior of a structure (or landscape) without permission of the province.

Where an Island municipality has its own provisions, the province defers responsibility. Such is the case in Charlottetown, which also has a delineated heritage area in the downtown core. Here as well, designation means that owners cannot alter the exterior of a structure or landscape without permission. In this case, however, the owner does not have to agree, though he/she has an opportunity to argue against it. Both the province and the capital provide only modest incentives to encourage ‘sympathetic’ renovation to designated structures. The province offers a plaque and funding of 25%, up to $3,000, and for residential properties the city offers a similar grant, as well as the waiving of the building permit fee and a five-year graduated tax freeze if the property is reassessed at a higher level due to heritage renovation.

Places of heritage interest also include archaeological sites. The provincial Archaeological Sites Protection Act outlines the circumstances under which these investigations can occur on the Island. Among other things, it renders illegal the disturbance of such sites without permission of the province. Because even the most careful practice of archaeology is invariably destructive, the Act specifies that all legal excavation is to be done to scientific standard and solely for the purposes of retrieving historical (or pre-historical) information. Though the artifacts buried therein belong to the province, under the federal Cultural Property Export and Import Act it is further prohibited, without a permit, to export them from Canada.

A problem with both pieces of legislation is that in Prince Edward Island there is little professional support for them, and almost no policing. The provincial unit responsible for heritage is seriously understaffed. Archaeological sites, many not even identified as such, are often located in out-of-the way places and easy prey for looters. In 2006 this came to public attention with the story of people using metal detectors to find artifacts and then digging them up and selling them on eBay. It caused a scandal, but a similar loss of Island heritage happens every summer, on a much grander scale, with the big farmhouse auctions. In addition to this loss, under the federal act noted above, if the antiques sold at these auctions are over 100 years old and are leaving the country without a permit, depending on their monetary value it may also be prohibited.

Since it is mandated by the provincial Museum Act to collect, preserve, protect, study and interpret our “human and natural heritage,” the P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundation keeps approximately 65,000 objects like these antiques and artifacts in its limited collections space. Most of this collection is donated; adequate funds for artifact acquisition and indeed for much of the other basic museum functions outlined in the Act are virtually non-existent. Also absent, though laid out in the legislation as key to the museum’s mandate, is any significant representation in the collection of the Island’s natural heritage.

Provincial responsibility for other types of heritage resources lies with different repositories. The province has mandated the Public Archives, for example, to collect and maintain mostly written documents, but also historical records like maps, photographs and oral history records. The Provincial Library is responsible largely for published material, including audio-visual and other items. The Confederation Centre Art Gallery has a national mandate, though its collection includes works by Island artists.

In Prince Edward Island a range of public policies directs what happens to our heritage resources. It is important to note, however, that heritage is affected not just by what governments do, but also by what they do not do.

Dr. Monica MacDonald is an adjunct professor in Canadian Studies at UPEI and an associate of The IRIS Group, an Island company specializing in public policy research.

For more information on the Island Heritage Study or to submit a brief please visit

http://islandheritagestudy.wordpress.com

Credit: This article appeared first in the Guardian on Monday 25, 2008. Paragraph six has been modified slightly from the original.

State of Island heritage draws interested public out to last in a series of meetings

by DOUG GALLANT
as published in The Guardian - February 23, 2008

The last of seven public meetings scheduled in conjunction with the Island Heritage Study drew more than 80 people to the Charlottetown Hotel Thursday.

“The turnout was very encouraging,” meeting chair Harry Baglole said Friday. “We had a number of city councillors out, the mayor of Charlottetown was there, we had people from the Chamber of Commerce, some federal MPs and many interested individuals. There was a lot of interest and a lot of energy in the room.”

Anyone who wished to address Thursday night’s meeting was given five minutes to do so.

“There were a lot of different issues addressed,” Baglole said. “There was a lot of talk about a provincial museum. Not everybody brought it up but a lot of people did and there seemed to be a lot of support for the idea.”

Both Charlottetown and Stratford were suggested as prime locations for such a facility.

Baglole said there was talk Thursday night about the cultural landscape of P.E.I.

“There was a lot of talk about the look of the countryside, about buildings, churches and farmhouses and there was a lot of talk about agriculture and what would happen if agriculture ceases to be a major industry.”

Living culture also figured into Thursday’s discussions.

“We had representation from the Benevolent Irish Society and the Scottish Settlers Society, the Caledonia Club. People are seeking more recognition for Gaelic and Celtic culture.”

Baglole said the nature of the Charlottetown meeting was somewhat different than the other public meetings.

“In other places, there was a lot of discussion with regards to local issues. In Charlottetown, it was more like a summing up of things, a provincial focus.”

There was a general consensus that more resources must be dedicated to heritage issues.

“There is a general concern that successive provincial governments, dating back to the late 1970s, have not invested enough in our heritage. We need more resources, more vision, and better co-ordination of heritage efforts. We were told there was a need for high professional standards from tip to tip for our museums.”

Baglole said other issues raised Thursday included the status of Upton Farm, the need for more designation of heritage roads and the need for a natural history museum.

“There have been a number of people calling for a natural history museum and for a much larger emphasis on natural history in our education system. People said we need to talk more about the importance of the environment and our heritage.”

Baglole said the input received at these public meetings will be reviewed and incorporated into a special report being prepared for the province.

Included in that report as well will be input received from 25 individuals from across the Island invited to meet with those carrying out the study and from several stakeholders groups.

The stakeholders groups will include, for example, people concerned with aboriginal culture and people focused of specific issues like architecture.

Baglole noted that while the public meetings are over members of the public can still make written submissions.

All research and consultation is to be completed by the end of March.

A preliminary report will be made to the provincial government by late May. The final report will go to the province in June.

What role for Island museums?

Heritage - THE FUTURE OF OUR PAST
by MONICA MACDONALD
as published in The Guardian - Feb 18, 2008

This is the second in a series of three articles meant to encourage and inform public participation in the Island Heritage Study commissioned by the provincial government. As part of the study, public meetings conducted by The IRIS Group are currently underway.

In museum circles everywhere there is always some big controversy but the fact is, most museum professionals can only hope for controversy - at least it gets public attention. In Prince Edward Island, that happened last year when the then-government announced that the main collection of provincial museum artifacts kept in the 'artifactory' in West Royalty would be moved to a new building in Murray River. Few expected the outpouring of disbelief, protest and downright vitriol that followed. Some supported the move. Others were surprised to learn that we even have a provincial museum with an artifact collection.

The traditional role of museums in general has been to preserve and protect the heritage resources entrusted to them, to conduct research on those resources or on topics related to them, and to disseminate the results through exhibition, publication and other modes of public education. While for most institutions these basic functions remain valid, museum environments and best practices are changing. In many facilities spaces now exist for school groups and children's activities as well as for community gatherings and special events. Exhibits are increasingly interactive and 'hands-on', involving the visitor in the learning process. Museums display 'visible storage' of artifact collections, which in past years were inaccessible to the public. Museum curators are more consultative with outside scholars and community groups, and their exhibit texts now often question previous assumptions as much as offer explanations.

Museums in Prince Edward Island include community-based sites like the Garden of the Gulf Museum in Montague, the Sir Andrew Macphail Homestead in Orwell Corner and the Lennox Island Mi'kmaq Cultural Centre. Most of these are run by dedicated volunteers and supported in very small part by a provincial government grant program. Island museums also include those seven under the auspices of the provincial government-supported Museum and Heritage Foundation. All, including the Confederation Centre Art Gallery (supported by a mix of federal and provincial funds) but not including the national historic sites run by Parks Canada, hold membership in the Community Museums Association of P.E.I. The primary goal of this non-profit group is to help raise museum standards through training and other support services.

The provincial museum system on the Island began in 1970 with the founding of the Heritage Foundation. In 1973, federal funds connected to the centennial established its headquarters at Beaconsfield, a historic house in downtown Charlottetown, as well as the first of the branch sites at Green Park (shipbuilding), Orwell Corner (historic village) and Basin Head (fisheries). The four together formed the basis of the current decentralized 'family' of seven.

Of these seven, like most of the other 30 or so museums Islandwide, four are seasonal - only Beaconsfield in Charlottetown, the Eptek Centre in Summerside and the Acadian Museum in Miscouche are open year-round. The latter two occasionally produce in-house exhibits or accept travelling exhibits to supplement their permanent displays, but the museum experience at Beaconsfield is limited. In addition to restricted hours during the school year, its period rooms are static. They do not present much opportunity for the diverse educational activities that are key to the mandates of provincial museum sites in off-Island urban centers. In the P.E.I. provincial museum system overall, also limited is the number of professional staff which in turn, affects the research, exhibition and publication output. Given this fact, efforts in public outreach like The Island Magazine are commendable.

Provincial museum systems elsewhere in Atlantic Canada present different models. With 27 sites Nova Scotia also has a decentralized system, but with a strong presence in Halifax of the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic and the Museum of Natural History, as well as substantial operations elsewhere like in Stellarton and Parrsboro. The New Brunswick Museum has one complex, in Saint John: an older building housing the head office, collections and archives/library, and a new set of galleries for exhibits and public programs that opened in a separate location in the city in 1996. In St. John's, there's The Rooms. With an architectural design inspired by the communal fish-processing rooms of Newfoundland fishing families, The Rooms opened to great fanfare in 2005. Its buildings contain the provincial archives, art gallery, and museum, with three regional satellite museums - one in Grand Bank and two in Grand Falls-Windsor.

In all of the above jurisdictions, museums are an important part of heritage policy. In Prince Edward Island we have a good foundation but what emerged at the public meetings held over the artifactory issue last year is that people want more. The devil, however, is in the details.

Dr. Monica MacDonald is an adjunct professor in Canadian Studies at UPEI and an associate of The IRIS Group, an Island company specializing in public policy research. More information on the Island Heritage Study and the public meetings is available at http://islandheritagestudy.wordpress.com

The third article in this series on Monday, Feb. 25 will look at some existing heritage policies.