Diamond Jubilee Celebration

The Prince Edward Historical Society in association with Heritage Canada and other community groups presents:

A Celebration of Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee

Friday, June 15, 2012 from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
&
Saturday, June 16, 2012 from 9:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
The Wellington and District Community Centre
111 Belleville Street
Wellington, Ontario

Schedule of Events

Friday, June 15, 2012

1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Tea Room and Displays open

Saturday, June 16, 2012

8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Car Boot Sale in the parking lot
9:00 a.m. Displays open

10:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. Opening ceremonies with dignitaries

10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Music, Diamond Jubilee cake, displays and guest speakers

12:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Tea Room open

3:30 p.m. Displays and tea room close

8:00 p.m. to 12:00 p.m. Diamond Jubilee dance with ’Little Bluff’ featuring Drew Ackerman

You can help protect access to Canada’s history

On Monday April 30, the National Archival Development Program (NADP) was axed by Library and Archives Canada. You might not have heard of this program, but it was worth $1.7 million each year to archives all over Canada. For every dollar received from the fund, archives raised another dollar through matched funding, meaning that the total value of the program to Canadians was $2.5 million every year.

This is what the program supported:

·   Outreach and educational activities in communities to help small institutions manage their archival materials

·   Development of the national on-line catalogue of archival descriptions, and its provincial and territorial counterparts, so all archives, including the very small, can reach Canadians to tell them about their holdings

·   Provision of archival and preservation advice to archives of all sizes

·   Work experience for new graduates from Canada’s archival and information studies programs

·   Cataloguing of archival materials to make them accessible to the public

·   Training opportunities for local archives

·   Site assessments to both urban and rural archives, to safeguard Canada’s documentary heritage

·   Preservation  of at-risk documents and other archival materials, including electronic records

Locally, the Prince Edward County Archives has benefited in the past from the work of Ontario’s Archives Advisor, Carolynn Bart-Riedstra; Preservation Consultant, Iona McCraith; and former Archeion Coordinator, Sharon White (now Archivist for the new Community Archives in Belleville).

“We have called upon them at least a half a dozen times for unusual circumstances,” says Barbara Sweet, CEO of the County of Prince Edward Public Library and Archives.

All three of these advisory positions have now been suspended as a result of the NADP cuts, along with similar posts across the other provinces and territories. This will affect small archives particularly, as the advisors were a much-used resource for information and training.

If you’d like to support the reversal of this decision, there are a few things you can do:

1. Sign the petition against the cut
2. Share the news with your friends and colleagues
3. Email your MP (Daryl Kramp if you’re in Prince Edward-Hastings)
4. Send a message to the Minister for Canadian Heritage, the Honourable James Moore ["The promotion of our culture...is at the heart of what I do every day"]
5. Read more in the Canadian Council of Archives’ Call to Action

Archives are not well-funded institutions and the NADP was one of the few sources of external funding available to support the work of archivists. Without this funding, it is going to be harder for Canadians to get access to the information they need.

2012 Annual General Meeting

The Annual General Meeting of the Prince Edward Historical Society will be held on Sunday, April 29th at 1:30 p.m. at the Picton Town Hall, Ross and King Streets, Picton, Ontario.

Guest Speaker: Stan McMullen on the Spiritualist Movement

A proposed slate of officers for the Society will be presented by the Executive and nominations from the floor will be accepted. The constitution of the Society is on the agenda: you can see the draft new constitution in this month’s edition of Chronicle, the Society’s newsletter.

Light refreshments will be served

All welcome: we hope to see you there!

Monarchy in March

The next Historical Society event will be a talk by Jane Ann Thompson McCaw on the role of the Monarchy in Canadian life. Come out and see some of her collection of Royalist memorabilia and hear some of her stories and memories relating to her interaction with and support of members of the Royal Family during her lifetime.

This event will take place at Picton Town Hall at 7pm on Wednesday March 21.

War of 1812 Symposium, University of Guelph

On February 25, the 41st Regiment of Foot Military Living History Group will present a conference/symposium on the War of 1812, in partnership with the London and Hamilton Living History Conferences, the University of Guelph History Department, Guelph Museums, Wellington County Museum & Archives, the Guelph Historical Society and the Company of Military Historians.

To find out more, please visit the conference website.

New edition of Chronicle available

c.1900 Christmas Card, courtesy the Phil Ainsworth Collection

The latest edition of the Historical Society’s newsletter, Chronicle, is now available from the Newsletters section of this site. It includes an update on the Digitization Day (tomorrow!) at Prince Edward County Archives in Wellington and an article on the history of the hotels which used to operate at the Sandbanks. There’s also news about The Settler’s Dream Location Key, a forthcoming publication which will act as a guide to whereabouts of the surviving properties featured in The Settler’s Dream.

The newsletter also has a membership form for you to complete if you would like to join the Society or renew your membership. Or perhaps purchase a membership as a festive gift…

The Lighthouses of Prince Edward County

Marc Seguin

Picton Town Hall was the venue for the Historical Society’s most recent speaker event, which was attended by more than 60 people. Marc Seguin shared the results of his extensive research into the history of the County’s lighthouses and appealed for help in ensuring the survival of the six which still remain.

Marc explained that the lighthouses were constructed between 1828 and 1967, in a variety of materials and styles, from masonry towers, through timber structure to concrete tubes. The earliest were built as warning lights, protecting shipping from the treacherous shoals around the County in the days when nearly all transportation of goods would have been carried on the water. In 1829, for example, 30,000 tons of shipping went through the port of Kingston alone. The later lights were directional: guiding shipping through the Telegraph Narrows in the Bay of Quinte and the sandbanks of Wellers Bay, for example.

Many of the lighthouses have now been demolished, but Prince Edward County still has more surviving lighthouses than any other municipality in Ontario. However, the future of these historic structures is uncertain. You can find out more about the lost lighthouses and those that remain on the Save our Lighthouses site. There is also information there on how you can help in the campaign to protect the six surviving lighthouses.