Windows on the West End - Heritage Tourism in St. John's, Newfoundland

The City of St. John's is holding a special celebration during St. John's Days to celebrate the heritage of the Downtown West End! It's going to be a great event with lots of exciting entertainment all day long, including Irish step dance and belly dance performances and tutorials, juggling, aerial silks, a fire show, tours of all historic locations participating, informative walking tours, face painting, caricatures, and much, much more!

Windows on the West End: June 25, 2011- 10am to 5pm. An introduction to the St. John's downtown historic west end. Take part in our walking tours (11am and 2pm) and collect stickers on our scavenger hunt to win prizes! Venues include: Railway Coastal Museum, City of St. John's Archives, Victoria Park, Wesley United Church, St. Patrick's Parish, Tommy Ricketts Monument, Apothecary Hall, Newman Wine Vaults and George Street United Church. Come out and enjoy lots of entertainment, food ($5 lunch) and prizes. All Attractions are open FREE of charge and will be ongoing from 10am to 5pm.

Full event listings can be found at the St. John's Days Celebrations.

Newfoundland and Labrador Root Cellar Bibliography now online

As part of this summer's Seeds to Supper festival, folklore co-op intern Crystal Braye has pulled together a bibliography about root cellars in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The resource includes a list of articles and reference materials concerning root cellars in the province, as well as links to do-it-yourself, how-to articles, for those who might want to make their own root cellar.

http://www.mun.ca/ich/inventory/rootcellarbibliography.php

If you know of a published article on Newfoundland and Labrador root cellars that we've missed, let us know and we'll add it to the list.

Seeds to Supper Festival logo launched

Here it is, the logo for the 3rd Annual Folklife Festival of Newfoundland and Labrador - Seeds to Supper! Design by Graham Blair.

Seeds to Supper Community Meeting 7pm, Sobeys, Merrymeeting Rd

HFNL to host Agricultural Heritage Festival Community Meeting

For the past 3 years the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador has supported a local folklife festival in the province. This year we hope to coordinate events with a number of the groups in the greater St. John’s area to promote the historical background of agriculture, and the contemporary movements that are active in the area. We wish to highlight the agri-culture that comes from the past but remains contemporary.

Participation as a part of the 2011 Folklife Festival, Seeds to Supper, will be of no cost to any groups wishing to hold an event however, all participating groups are responsible for their individual event. If you are a group, or individual, who would be willing to host an event during our Seeds to Supper festival we would like you to come to our community planning meeting on Wednesday June 15th, 2011 at 7pm at Sobey’s on Merrymeeting Rd., St. John’s.

Mummering included in latest historic commemorations

Latest Historic Commemorations Designations Announced

Six new designations under the Provincial Historic Commemorations Program were announced by the Honourable Terry French, Minister of Tourism, Culture and Recreation, during a ceremony held at The Rooms.

The latest designations were made under the following categories:

Places of Provincial Significance
• The Bonne Bay Cottage Hospital
• The cultural landscape that includes The Beaches and the Bloody Bay Cove Quarry

Distinctive Cultural Traditions and Practices
• Mummering
• The rescues associated with the wreck of the Waterwitch

Event of Provincial Significance
• The U-Boat attacks on the Bell Island ore ships in 1942

Person of Provincial Significance
• Edward (Ted) Russell

“The tangible and intangible heritage of Newfoundland and Labrador plays a vital role in the province’s history,” said Minister French. “Through the Provincial Historic Commemorations Program, we have honoured an additional six designations for the important and lasting impression each has made in Newfoundland and Labrador.”

The Provincial Historic Commemorations Program is a citizen-driven program administered by a six-member board. The program welcomes individuals or groups to nominate people, places, events and traditions they feel are provincially significant and worthy of official commemoration.

“During our first two ceremonies, we made five designations of significant places, events, and traditions,” said Françoise Enguehard, Chair of the Provincial Historic Commemorations Board. “This ceremony makes 11 designations in total, but as with any new program, there are still many opportunities for future nominations – especially in the categories of significant people and traditions.”

Past designates include: Kelly Russell, Dildo Island, the founding of the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary, the Tsunami of 1929 and rescues at sea, rescues made by Ann Harvey and her family in 1828 and 1838, rescues associated with the wrecks of the USS Truxton and USS Pollux in 1942, and a rescue made by Captain William Jackman in 1867.

For more information about the Provincial Historic Commemorations Program, including further information on these new designations as well as nomination criteria, visit: www.seethesites.ca/commemorations  or contact the Commemorations Office at 709-729-6901.

Establishment of the Provincial Historic Commemorations Program was among the objectives outlined in the province’s cultural strategy, Creative Newfoundland and Labrador: The Blueprint for Development and Investment in Culture (2006). Since the launch of the strategy, the Provincial Government has invested more than $56 million into the arts, culture and heritage sectors.

Root cellars, young folklorists, and Seeds to Supper Festival launch

In this edition of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Update for Newfoundland and Labrador, we turn the sod on our Seeds to Supper Festival, the province's third annual folklife festival; young folklorists hit Water Street and work on heritage fairs projects; we explore the tradition of root cellars; and the Heritage Foundation takes on a new public folklore co-op student.

Download the pdf.

The Royal Readers-- Victorian-era textbooks online

Today, I was looking at some of our ICH collections on Memorial University's Digital Archives Initiative.  While poking around, I found that the Library has digitized The Royal Readers, a series of elementary school textbooks which are often mentioned in local oral history and folklore interviews when old-time school days are discussed.

The Royal Readers were numbered, representing ascending reading levels, and included illustrated prose pieces and poetry, word lessons,  rhetorical passages with sections on useful knowledge, great inventions, the classification of animals, punctuation and world geography, as well as information on British history and  the British Constitution.

This from the Digital Archives Initiative:

"The Royal Readers, produced in Britain, were used in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador from the 1870s until well into the 20th century. The 8 books in the Royal School Series, including the primer and the infant reader, covered the subjects reading and spelling from the commencement of schooling to final matriculation."

The books were used in a number of British colonial education systems, including Australia and Guyana.  In Australia, the books were used throughout Queensland and New South Wales.  According to the Queensland Department of Training and Education, "the Royal Readers or the Blue Readers were introduced into Queensland schools in 1892.... The Royal Readers had been prepared especially for Victorian schools and featured some Australian content. The authors made great use of the natural world as well as incidents and common daily events to attract children to the stories. Teachers were encouraged to teach children not only the 'art of reading' but also a 'love of reading'. Illustrations were used effectively to attract children 'through the eye' to the stories and to help them understand same." 

You can see the readers on the DAI, or  even download the Readers for Kobo.

Barbie vs Body Shop - Truth or Fiction

Over the past few days, this photo and accompanying text has gone viral on Facebook:

‎"This was an ad made by bodyshop. But Barbie INC. found out about it and now it’s banned. Repost if you think this ad deserves to be seen."

The advertisement is a real one, part of the "Ruby" campaign designed in-house by the Body Shop, back in 1996 (read the case study here).  I love the message, and the ad campaign was certainly effective when it was launched, 15 years ago. The fact that it has gone viral, now, indicates that its message still resonates with the general public.

But is the text that goes with it correct? When something like this gets posted and re-posted willy-nilly all over the internet with one click, it makes me wonder.

I did a quick search for references to the supposedly "banned" campaign, and found lots of references to it, most of them word-for-word reprints of the text above, or text worded in similarly vague fashion. Barbie INC isn't a real company (Mattel, however, is) and online sources are rather evasive in saying when, where, and by whom the ad was actually banned.

A 1997 New York Times article gives an overview of the campaign, but doesn't mention a ban. The only websites I could find that do are blogs or personal opinion sites (like the one you are reading now).

This doesn't mean that the ad wasn't banned somewhere. If someone has an actual news source, a printed journal reference, or a court record that shows that a ban was actually in effect, I'd love to see something that references where and when a ban took place. I'm still waiting for the Snopes.com article.

I think there is something ironic in the way the ad has resurfaced, a decade and a half later, with its new text.  The campaign suggests to us that we should think critically about issues like body image, and truth in advertising. Thinking for ourselves, critically, about what is true and what isn't, is probably something we should ALSO do before clicking the "share" button on an internet meme.

But then, maybe, folklorists like me would be out of a job!

Turning the Sod on the 2011 Folklife Festival - Seeds to Supper

HFNL to host Agricultural Heritage Festival Community Meeting
Wednesday June 15th, 2011
7pm
Sobey’s on Merrymeeting Rd.

For the past 3 years the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador has supported a local folklife festival in the province. The goal of the festival is to celebrate these otherwise unspoken traditions that may be taken for granted. This year’s theme has an agricultural focus. When we surveyed a couple of community groups in the greater St. John’s area, there was a large concern about the loss of agricultural knowledge and practices.

This year we hope to coordinate events with a number of the groups in the greater St. John’s area to promote the historical background of agriculture, and the contemporary movements that are active in the area. We wish to highlight the agri-culture that comes from the past but remains contemporary. Participation as a part of the 2011 Folklife Festival, Seeds to Supper, will be of no cost to any groups wishing to hold an event however, all participating groups are responsible for their individual event.

If you are a group, or individual, who would be willing to host an event during our Seeds to Supper festival we would like you to come to our community planning meeting on Wednesday June 15th, 2011 at 7pm at the Community Meeting Room, Sobey’s on Merrymeeting Rd., St. John’s. If you are interested in participating we can help you promote your event and be a part of Seeds to Supper. This meeting is for the initial planning stage of the festival so that we may coordinate the who’s, what’s, and when’s.

Please contact Mel at 1-888-739-1892 ext 3 to register or email : ichprograms@gmail.com for more information.