On the road to Humber Valley - we are coming your way in May!

Department of Highways Trucks, 1930s
used during the construction of the highway
between Corner Brook and Deer Lake, courtesy Deb LeDrew

Attention all knitters, crocheters, snowshoe makers, people who know traditional recipes, and anyone who makes, crafts, or creates objects - Heritage NL is looking for you!

The Humber Valley Skills Inventory, part of the Humber Valley Thriving Regions project, will identify existing knowledge holders in the area, including craft producers, bakers, farmers, foragers, brewers, printmakers, fly tyers, beekeepers, cooks, artists, antler carvers, and makers of all kinds.  We are looking for anyone with skills and knowledge about the making of everyday objects, skills, art, and crafts from these communities:

Steady Brook, Little Rapids, Humber Village, Humber Valley Resort, Pasadena, Pynn’s Brook, Little Harbour, St. Judes, Deer Lake, Reidville, Cormack, and Howley

The end product will be a publicly-available listing of local skills holders. For examples see:

• Saving Traditional Skills in the Tri Town Area and Surrounding Communities, Great Northern Peninsula (2022)

• Baccalieu Trail Traditional Knowledge Inventory (2021)

If you wish to be listed in the Inventory, email ich@heritagenl.ca or fill out the survey at https://forms.gle/53EMsrC9mTm9FUku7 

 

Heritage NL will be at three open-to-all meetings where you are encouraged to come and learn about the project.  If you are crafty, bring an object you made to show and share!

 

• Monday, May 8th, 7-9pm - Cormack Skills Show and Share - Cormack Town Hall 
• Tuesday, May 9th, 6:30-8:30pm - Yarns and Yarns with the Knit Wits - Pasadena Place, 19 Tenth Avenue, Pasadena
• Wednesday, May 10th, 1pm -3pm - Yarns and Yarns with Kindred Spirits Knit 'n Yarn - Salvation Army, 20 Church Street (corner of Chapel Hill), Deer Lake
• Thursday, May 11th, 7-9pm - Deer Lake Skills Show and Share  - Humber Lodge, 2 Poplar Road
• Saturday, May 13th, 1pm -3pm - Pasadena Heritage Society AGM - Royal Canadian Legion, 92 Main Street. You can register with Pasadena Heritage at https://forms.gle/fBnzU3TL1jk8zF7F7 to help plan number of attendees. Coffee, tea and treats will be provided!

#CollectiveMemories Roadtrip to Humber Valley - People, Places and Traditions

Discussing people, places, and traditions.

On Wednesday Dale and I headed back to Reidville, the community where we interviewed Clifford Reid, in order to do a second People, Places, and Traditions workshop. We ended up with a smaller crowd due to the size of the town.  This meant that the sixteen of us were able to sit around one big table and have a discussion about some of the town’s history and stories.

Writing on their index cards.

After discussing the people, places, and traditions in the community we handed out index cards for everyone to fill out. Everyone took a couple of cards and wrote out someone, some place, or some tradition which is important to the community. We then mapped the cards on the large map of the community.

The story of Dead Man's Woods.

What was great about this workshop was that the size of the group and the close-knit community meant it turned into a story telling session with people taking turns telling stories from their childhood. Russ Reid told many stories about Mr. Oxford and himself growing up and the trouble they would get into.  The stories ranged from antagonizing the bull in his pen to sneaking up to the lumber camps, there were stories about a child who fell into a well and survived, a woman who gave birth in a canoe on her way to Deer Lake, and almost everyone had a story about stealing apples or fruit from their neighbours’ yards.

Adding stories and memories to the map.

Impromptu story telling around the Reidville map.

Reidville is located on a river and the islands of the river were named as well as the beaches which served as swimming holes or trouting spots. One of the islands, named Grandmother’s Island, was where Mr. Oxford would collect the long grass which would be used in their psalm Sunday services in the school which doubled as a church.

Discussing the future of heritage in the Humber Valley region.

After the session in Reidville Dale and I headed to Deer Lake where we had quick supper, and a poke around the community and two of the local cemeteries before heading to the Grand Lake Centre of Economic Development for a meeting with the Humber Valley Heritage society. We met with four members of the heritage society to talk about the future of heritage in Humber Valley. These women were the people who invited us out to lead the workshops and do some interviews and they are interested in how they can use the information collected at workshops like these. The heritage society is interested in holding similar events around the Humber Valley region in order to work together to promote the heritage of the region. The first thing they plan to do is take the information located on the physical maps and store it digitally. The committee is very interested in using Google My Maps to make this material accessible to and also editable by community members. They want to create a map of the region in order to showcase the agricultural heritage of the region and increase the tourism to all the communities.

~Terra Barrett

Pasadena Heritage Society Oral History Collection now online! #nlheritage

We are very pleased to announce that a new collection of oral history interviews is up online!

As part of our Collective Memories project, the Heritage Foundation NL, in partnership with the Pasadena Heritage Society - NL, has just placed a collection of oral history interviews (audio and pdf transcripts) online with Memorial University's Digital Archives Initiative.

The collection contains interviews with locals on their childhood memories, local businesses, the fire hall, entertainment, social clubs, railway stories and more. Thanks to Carole Spicer for her work in getting things organized, and to Michelle Tapp for organizing the collection and doing up all the metadata!

The oral histories from Pasadena will eventually be part of a larger collection of oral history material from the Humber Valley region.  You can browse the collection here.

Photo courtesy Pasadena Heritage

“Not every town has heritage buildings. Every town has heritage.” Notes from the road

I had a very quick trip to Deer Lake and back last Friday and Saturday. I had been invited by Carole Spicer to talk about heritage at the annual general meeting of the Grand Lake Centre of Economic Development. I was treated to their roast beef dinner and then talked about what heritage means to communities, demonstrating the links between our architectural heritage and our intangible cultural heritage, oral history, and folklore.

The audience was mostly made up of local volunteers, community workers, and councillors from the surrounding communities. One of the points I made was that while not every town has heritage buildings, every town has heritage of some kind that is worth safeguarding. Sometimes communities get focussed on heritage places or running a community museum to preserve artefacts that they forgot that local stories, skills, and knowledge are just as important.

They put me up at a local AirBNB, and then on Saturday morning we met back the Grand Lake Centre of Economic Development (a great spot to rent if you are looking for meeting space in the area) for a heritage workshop, with representation from Cormack, Reidville, Deer Lake and Pasadena. We talked about oral history, digitizing collections, and community mapping. I gave examples of what is happening with other communities across Newfoundland and Labrador, and talked about how communities can better engage local people and turn collected stories and oral histories into more participatory community events.

We had a great chat about identifying local heritage assets, war brides, cultural diversity, agricultural history, and jam making! Several topics seemed to generate the most discussion, including the need to work more on a regional heritage cluster or region, and the need for some community mapping to identify local heritage places and traditions.

So, I expect you will hear more about work in the Humber Valley area! I’m planning on heading back later this summer to run a train-the-trainer session on our “People, Places, and Traditions” workshop, so that a series of community mapping sessions can be carried out in communities in the valley. Stay tuned!

Want a heritage workshop for your community? Email me at ich@heritagefoundation.ca.

Photo:
Back Row - Amanda-Marie Hillyard, Dale Jarvis, Carole Spicer, Winona White
Front Row - Glenda Garnier, Jean Young