Tea, baskets, and the community conservation of intangible cultural heritage

In this month's edition of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Update for Newfoundland and Labrador, we invite people to our "Tea and Baskets" events in Corner Brook and Grand Falls-Windsor; ICH intern Nicole Penney shares some of her research on mill lunch baskets; and we nominate inukshuk building as an item of provincial historical significance. Download the newsletter in pdf form.

I have been corresponding a bit lately with Misako Ohnuki, Deputy Director of the International Research Centre for ICH in the Asia-Pacific Region (IRCI) based in Osaka, Japan. Curious about the work we are doing in Newfoundland and Labrador, she asked me about some of the difficulties and hurdles that we have have faced so far in documenting intangible cultural heritage (ICH) in communities in this province. Read my short report on "Challenges in the community conservation of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Newfoundland and Labrador."

And finally, Memorial University has published an article about our current Public Folklore Intern Nicole Penney's work placement with Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador and her work cataloguing baskets and baskets makers in Newfoundland.

Happy reading!

Help Wanted

The ICH office is looking for an individual to do some postering in Grand Falls-Windsor for our upcoming "Tea 'n' Baskets" event in March. If you live in the Grand Falls-Windsor area and would like to pick up a few hours work, please contact Nicole at 1-888-739-1892 ext 3 or via email at  ichprograms@gmail.com.

Origin Stories

The exact origin of this two-handled, splint style lunch basket design is unknown but research has pointed to a couple of possibilities. In her article, “The Multiple Roles of the Millworker's Lunch Basket in Central Newfoundland”, Jane Burns suggests the baskets were originally factory made imports that resourceful Newfoundlanders deconstructed and learned to make themselves. Research also suggests that the lunch baskets were sold right out of the pulp and paper mills, possibly starting in Corner Brook and carrying over to the others. The mill in Corner Brook opened in 1923 and the oldest lunch basket documented so far is dated 1928, belonging to Doris O’Dell of Corner Brook. O’Dell inherited the basket from her father who used it when he worked in the mill. The basket is factory made, purchased from the Peterboro Basket Company in New Hampshire. This company dates back to 1854 and it's possible the mill in Corner Brook purchased these baskets to sell to employees.

Others, like Wayne Green, also of Corner Brook, feel the baskets may have been originally designed by female basket makers of the Nova Scotia Mi’kmaq tradition. He recalls a woman and her two daughters who would stay with his family when he was a child. Green recounted that the women would come from Nova Scotia, riding the Newfoundland Railway, stopping where the trains did in order to sell baskets of all sorts. His father would take orders from this basket-maker before her arrival and Green remembers the mill lunch basket was always a very popular item. 

 One thing we know for sure is that there were Newfoundlanders who eventually began making the baskets themselves. One of the most prolific and well-known mill lunch basket makers was Angus Gunn Sr. of Grand Falls-Windsor. He began making baskets in the early 1950s and is said to have made hundreds of lunch baskets for local mill workers.

Show us what you've got!

Poster design by Graham Blair, check him out at grahamblairdesigns.com

Come on out to "Tea 'n' Baskets" and show off you mill basket and share your memories. We provide the treats!

A biscuit a basket

This coming March we're coordinating "Tea n' Baskets", an event to bring together those who have a mill lunch basket of their own. Whether you worked in the mill yourself or the basket was handed down from a family member, we welcome you to come out and show your basket and share your stories.

 

A mill lunch basket belonging to Kevin Gunn, which was made and used by his father, Angus Gunn

A mill lunch basket belonging to Julie Rideout, handed down from her father, Gerald Crawley. This basket was made by Julie's grandfather, Angus Gunn

 A mill lunch basket, belonging to Bob and Tina Houston. Tina acquired it from a former employee of the Abitibi Mill in Stephenville. Tina cleaned, repaired and painted the basket, added the fabric lining and repurposed it as a potato basket

Join us on Sunday, March 18th from 1-3pm at the Glynmill Inn in Corner Brook and on Sunday, March 25th from 1-3pm at the Mount Peyton Hotel in Grand Falls-Windsor. 


We provide the tea and biscuits!

A call out for mill baskets

 
The  Intangible Cultural Heritage Development Office is currently working on a collection project focused on baskets and basket makers in Newfoundland. We are particularly interested in Mi'kmaq root baskets, trout baskets and mill lunch baskets.  We will be putting photos and descriptions of these baskets on the online archive, the Digital Archives Initiative, which can be found at http://collections.mun.ca/.



We are very interested in collecting photographs and reminiscence of mill baskets, the distinctive two-handled splint style lunch baskets used by the paper mill workers in central Newfoundland. The paper mill in Grand Falls-Windsor was open for operation from 1905 to 2009 and was quite literally the backbone of the community.  It was a regular sight to see men walking to work carrying large woven lunch baskets, laden with home cooked food. Whether they be rectangular or oval, made from juniper, birch, or even steel, these baskets were a symbol of hard work and financial security. Many men worked in the paper mill their entire lives to provide for their families and these baskets were often generational, passed down to a younger male member of the family, if he became employed with the mill.



It seems a number of these baskets were made by the same people so many looked very similar. In order to personalize their baskets, the mill workers would etch their names, doodle, or affix stickers and photographs on them. The baskets were also used for practical joking and initiation into the mill. If a new worker was too eager to leave at the end of his shift his basket may have been nailed down or filled with rocks so that when he grabbed it the handles would come right off!



The mill basket was also a way for young children to get a glimpse inside the paper mill, which for most was a mysterious, even scary, place. Many children delivered their father’s mill basket when they worked shift work. Don Taylor, whose father worked for the mill from 1956 to 1992, remembers that you would lay your baskets “in the front porch of the mill...no one was allowed to go in unless they worked there”. Often young boys of the community could be seen walking proudly with their father’s mill basket, putting on an act as though they were a mill worker. I recently met with Don and have included some photographs of his basket.



Some of the best known mill basket-makers were Angus Gunn of Grand Falls Windsor and Ray Osmond and Ken Payne, both of Botwood. All three men are no longer living, but as of 2001 Clarence White of Botwood was still making mill baskets.



If you have a mill basket please contact us. We would love to get photos and with your permission add your basket to our online collection. You can reach us at ichprograms@gmail.com

Don Taylor imitating the way his father carried the mill basket

Sonny's Dream Book Launch and other ICH notes

In this edition of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Update from Newfoundland and Labrador, Memorial University's Department of Folklore will be hosting the the launch of the Dr. Peter Narvaez book Sonny's Dream: Essays on Newfoundland Folklore and Popular Culture; ICH Development Officer Dale Jarvis explores the revitalization of the Christmas Hobby Horse tradition in Newfoundland and Labrador; we meet the new public folklore intern, Nicole Penney; and notes on our ongoing basket and basket makers project.

Download the PDF

The Barnable Bassinet: A woven Newfoundland crib

One of the traditions that we are working to document is basket making. After I did an interview with CBC's Weekend Arts Magazine on basket making (listen here to that interview), I got a call from Frances Barnable about a woven bassinet that she had bought in 1959.

The crib was made as part of a craft training program run by the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) and was purchased at the CNIB shop which was located in the building which now houses Coffee Matters, across from the Newfoundland Hotel.  If you have any information on that training program, or on other Newfoundland or Labrador baskets, email me at ich@heritagefoundation.ca.

Material culture nerds: Compare this to the reproduction of a 15th century crib at the archeological site of Walraversijde, near Oostende, Belgium.

Call for papers: Ethnology at the Crossroads

Ethnology at the Crossroads
CALL FOR PAPERS, Workshops or Roundtables
May 26-28, Waterloo, Ontario

The FSAC/ACEF 2012 conference will be held with the Congress of the Humanities and Social Science, in Waterloo, Ontario and co-hosted by Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Waterloo. The theme for this year's Congress is Crossroads: Scholarship for an Uncertain World.

Building on the Congress 2012 theme, the theme for our meeting will be Ethnology at the Crossroads. Ethnologists and Folklorists are committed to engaging with topics that fall at the crossroads and margins of our societies. As our discipline has developed, we have often found ourselves as lone members in diverse departments, and therefore have brought our unique methodologies and theories to interdisciplinary research groups. We have often studied the practices that occur when cultures cohabitate and influence each other (or purposefully remain uninfluenced by each other). We work with populations who are confronted with their own crossroads; facing changes in the economy, family composition, social constructs, and technology.

Suggested paper topics include:
* The future of Ethnology and/or Folklore in Canada
* Canadian responses to the UNESCO 2003 convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage
* Cultural "crossroads"; both past and present
* Disciplinary intersections; experiences and best practices

Proposals dealing with other topics will also be considered as space permits. Applications for Panels and Workshops are strongly encouraged.

PLEASE NOTE, IN ORDER TO BE CONSIDERED:
1) All applicants are required to fill out the attached form-fillable PDF form ONLY and email it to Jodi McDavid. Please adhere to the space provided for your abstract. Please indicate any AV needs in the space provided on your form.
Be sure to include your strict maximum 100-word abstract for your formal presentation (in English and French if possible, or simply in your first language) along with your name, department, institutional affiliation, and contact information by February 15, 2012.

2) Hard copy/surface mail submissions of abstracts will not be accepted.

3) Only current members may participate in this event or have their submission considered (see membership form). Your abstract will not considered until the Secretary-Treasurer has received your membership fee, preferably via Paypal, although cheques are also accepted.

NEW THIS YEAR:
The Association no longer charges a translation fee, to avoid varying quality in supplied translations, and unnecessary pressure on our administration.

We are attempting to move into a fully-electronic system of membership payment, abstract submission, and communication. Please join us in this endeavour!

FSAC CONFERENCE FEES will be collected by Congress, and is $30 for all delegates, however, when meeting with Congress, you also must pay Congress fees. 2012 fees have not yet been set, for comparison, in 2011 early registration fees were $55 Congress fees + $30

FSAC fees (unwaged, student, underemployed, etc.), regular member $150 Congress + $30 FSAC fees.

Accommodation & Travel
How to get to Waterloo: http://congress2012.ca/attend/how-to-get-to-waterloo/
On campus accommodation: http://congress2012.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/On-Campus-Accommodation-Options_FINAL.pdf
Where to stay in Waterloo: http://congress2012.ca/attend/where-to-stay-in-waterloo/
Some funds are available for member reimbursement. See the Travel Funding Policy to see if you qualify: http://www.acef.ulaval.ca/voyageaf.htm