Wicker work and woven furniture in Newfoundland - Have you seen a chair like this?

I've been scanning some photos from North River and Halls Town in Conception Bay, as part of an ongoing project we have there. If you are on Facebook,  you can look at all those photos in the North River Halls Town Memories group.

One of the photos is scanned from a slide from the Baccalieu Trail Heritage Corporation, circa 1994. I have no information for it, but am assuming it came out of a house in North River, and was photographed when the Heritage Corp was doing heritage inventory work there in the 1990s. It shows a wicker rocking chair, painted white. I don't know if it was made locally or imported, but I'd love to have more information on it, or pieces like it.

Back in 2012, I photographed the woven bassinet below, owned by the Barnable family. It was purchased in 1959, and was made as part of a craft training program run by the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB). You can see more on that here.

If you have any pieces of Newfoundland (or Labrador) made woven furniture or basketry, or if these spark a memory for you, email me at dale@heritagenl.ca or comment below.

Living Heritage Podcast Ep173 Collecting Covid with Maureen Peters (with video!)

Welcome to the  Covid-19 version of the Living Heritage Podcast! We've shifted the format a bit, and are recording on Zoom, which lets us bring you some video as well. We'll still be podcasting the audio on our Anchor.fm station so if you want to listen to just the audio, head over there and download it. But since you are here, enjoy the video version!
In this episode, Maureen Peters, Curator of History at The Rooms, St. John's, NL, chats with Dale Jarvis of Heritage NL about documenting the Covid-19 Pandemic in Newfoundland and Labrador. They chat about what The Rooms is collecting in terms of material culture, why it is important to collect this material now, looking back at polio and smallpox in the province, Corona beer facemasks, and crocheting a model of the human intestines! 

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Living Heritage is about people who are engaged in the heritage and culture sector, from museum
professionals and archivists, to tradition bearers and craftspeople - all those who keep history alive at the
community level. The show is a partnership between HeritageNL and CHMR Radio.
Theme music is Rythme Gitan by Latché Swing.

Living Heritage Podcast Ep172 Dr. Laura Sanchini of the Canadian Museum of History

Photo courtesy of Laura Sanchini

Dr. Laura Sanchini, the Curator of Craft, Design, and Popular Culture at the Canadian Museum of History, talks about her work and background as a folklorist. Laura has an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Folklore from Memorial University. Before she began her work at the Canadian Museum of History, Laura worked at the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 and travelled all over the country conducting oral history interviews.

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The Living Heritage Podcast is about people who are engaged in the heritage and culture sector, from museum
professionals and archivists, to tradition bearers and craftspeople - all those who keep history alive at the
community level. The show is a partnership between HeritageNL and CHMR Radio.
Theme music is Rythme Gitan by Latché Swing.

Remembering Dr. Ivan "Bud" Green, Deer Lake. Do you have a memory of him?

A while back, I posted about the work we've started with the Town of Deer Lake to map out heritage assets (read that here).  One of the people of possible historic interest that was noted at our workshop was Dr. Ivan "Bud" Green. When we posted our note, Antony Berger sent us the following clips. Do you have a memory of Dr. Green? If so, post below!

Exploring the Wooden Boat Museum of Newfoundland and Labrador

The rocky shores of Newfoundland and Labrador has created a bond between Newfoundlanders and Labradorians and the sea, as well the fishery that sustained it for centuries. Generations of fishermen relied on the boats right here at home using traditional methods to provide for their families and ensure their survival at sea. These wooden boats were the workhorses of the fishing industry and the designs were often unique from one outport community to another. The transmission of this knowledge has declined in the past half-century, but in Winterton, one organization is working to safeguard this knowledge and pass it on to future generations.

The Wooden Boat Museum of Newfoundland and Labrador. Photo by Katie Crane, 2019.

A small fishing community in Trinity Bay, Winterton has a long tradition of boat building. In the 70s and 80s folklorist David Taylor conducted fieldwork as a graduate student in Folklore at Memorial University in the community, taking extensive photographs and notes on the construction and design of the unique boats built in this community. It was this information that inspired the Winterton Heritage Advisory Board to create what they thought would be a temporary exhibit for Come Home Year in 1997. The display proved to be so popular that it was converted to a permanent exhibit, and eventually expanded to celebrate wooden boats not just in Winterton, but across the province. The Wooden Boat Museum of Newfoundlandand Labrador was established as a provincial museum in 2008 with its headquarters in Winterton. Its mandate is to connect wooden boat builders and wooden boat enthusiasts across the province and to encourage sharing the knowledge and skills associated with traditional wooden boat building.

Three piece mould once owned by boat builder Marcus French. Photo by Wooden Boat Museum of Newfoundland and Labrador, 2018.

Through a mix of on-going exhibits and hands-on workshops with descendants of boat building masters, the Wooden Boat Museum of Newfoundland and Labrador is working to both safeguard and transmit the knowledge and history of wooden boats in Newfoundland and Labrador. They still keep to their roots with a folklorist on staff. Crystal Braye works to document people still making wooden boats today and their knowledge of wooden boat construction, as well as other traditions of boat building across the province. Listen to her talk about what her research includes in this episode of the Living Heritage Podcast.

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The Living Heritage Podcast is about people who are engaged in the heritage and culture sector, from museum
professionals and archivists, to tradition bearers and craftspeople - all those who keep history alive at the
community level. The show is a partnership between HeritageNL and CHMR Radio.
Theme music is Rythme Gitan by Latché Swing.

Let's take a peek inside the Green Family Forge, Trinity

When Ada Green approached the Trinity Historical Society in the 1990s about opening her family’s forge, abandoned since it closed almost 40 years earlier, as a museum exhibit she never could have dreamed that today it would be a working forge once again.

The Green Family Forge has operated in some way since the 1700s. The current forge was built around the turn of the century to replace an older forge. It is unusual because of its size, large enough to have two fires. Though people often associate forges with agricultural tools, the Green Family Forge also supplied metal parts, including anchors, for the fishing industry in Trinity. When it closed its doors in 1955, all the blacksmith’s tools, some of them homemade, were left inside and remained untouched until the forge reopened as a museum in 1991.

Green Family Forge, Trinity NL. Photo by Dale Jarvis, 2019.

Current blacksmith Wade Ivany transformed the forge from a static exhibit into a living history museum based on a social enterprise model. Today, as a member of the Craft Council of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Green Family Forge makes and sells letter openers, candle holders, fireplace pokers and more with the help of apprentice blacksmith Devin Hookey. These sales help to keep the forge operational.

Blacksmith at work, Green Family Forge, Trinity, NL. Photo by Dale Jarvis, 2019.

But to the blacksmiths and the members of the Trinity Historical Society, it’s not about the money. It is about passing on valuable traditional skills which have been in decline for half a century. Jim Miller of the Trinity Historical Society says, “those living history skills of the trades are very important to us overall for our operations and will be, I think, going into the future. That seems to be the market now where visitors are even wanting to see those things demonstrated and, even more so, wanting to take part.”

Visitors watch blacksmith Devin Hookey at work, Green Family Forge, Trinity, NL. Photo by Dale Jarvis, 2019.

The Green Family Forge is open from April to November and is one of the must-see tourist attractions in the Trinity area. Visitors are encouraged to stop by and watch a demonstration by the blacksmiths working to keep this tradition alive. To learn more about blacksmithing in Newfoundland and Labrador, check out this episode of the Living Heritage Podcast.

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The Living Heritage Podcast is about people who are engaged in the heritage and culture sector, from museum
professionals and archivists, to tradition bearers and craftspeople - all those who keep history alive at the
community level. The show is a partnership between HeritageNL and CHMR Radio.
Theme music is Rythme Gitan by Latché Swing.

Heritage NL and The Rooms launch Covid-19 NL Oral History Project, and want your stories.

What have Covid-19 shutdowns meant for you personally? Have you been learning how to bake bread or sew? How are you staying in touch with family and friends? Local heritage organizations want to know!

Heritage NL, in partnership with The Rooms, is collecting personal stories for an oral history project about the experiences of living through a pandemic.  The “Covid-19 NL Oral History Project” invites Newfoundlanders and Labradorians living in the province or away to document their memories and thoughts about what is happening to them or in their communities during the current novel coronavirus situation. 

The project is designed to document how the virus is affecting the lives of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, and to archive their collective memories. Interested volunteers can request to be interviewed over the phone or web, can self-record a voice memo or video, they can interview a family member, and submit their file by email, or complete an online questionnaire.

The collected material will become part of a permanent online archive for future generations of students and researchers and may be included in a future physical or online exhibit at The Rooms. 

“Recording oral histories is one way to better understand the Covid-19 pandemic and the effects it is having on the lives of ordinary people,” says Heritage NL folklorist Dale Jarvis. “To create a historical record of how everyday people are responding to this event, we have developed sample questions and easy ways for people to share their stories.”

While all personal stories of the pandemic are of interest, Jarvis is particularly curious about the informal stories of health care workers and those working on the front lines of the pandemic: nurses, emergency responders, home care workers, grocery clerks, and the like. 

The oral histories are part of a longer ongoing project that The Rooms curatorial staff is engaging with the community on to gather materials related to people's experiences of the pandemic. These materials may be integrated into an exhibition, collections, or social media at a later date. The Rooms is looking for materials that reflect the culturally specific ways that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are dealing with this global event.

If you have a memory or story to share or want more information on the project, contact either Dale Jarvis at covid19@heritagenl.ca or visit the project website at www.hfnl.ca.  To submit a physical object for consideration, email Maureen Peters, Curator of History at MPeters@therooms.ca. 

Basketry Summer School in the 1930s - Musgravetown and Bonavista

I recently came across the following photographs in Memorial University's Digital Archives Initiative (DAI).  The first two are from Musgravetown, presumably in 1937. The photos are from the H.M. Dawe Photograph Collection of the United Church of Canada - Newfoundland Conference Archives.

The third photo is from Bonavista, taken two years previously. The photo is from the Maritime History Archive - Forbes Family Photograph Collection.

I'm not certain, but I suspect the Summer School in question was a training program for Newfoundland teachers, where they could acquire skills to take back to their classrooms in September.  Support for this comes from a clipping from the Western Star, 1936-05-06:

If you have information on this program or similar schemes to teach basketry skills in Newfoundland and Labrador, or photos of any baskets that might have been produced in this way, email dale@heritagenl.ca 

Heritage Update - New Designations, Virtual Museums, and Heritage post Covid-19

In this edition of the Heritage Update, Jerry Dick discusses Post-COVID-19 and Economic Stimulus – An Opportunity for Heritage; Michael Philpott introduces the new heritage designations; Dale Jarvis takes you on a virtual heritage tour of historic Bay Roberts neighbourhoods; and Andrea O'Brien gives an update on what's happening during the pandemic shutdowns.

Download the pdf here.