Get your long underwear ready! It's a #MummersFestival #Podcast! #FolkloreThursday

In celebration of the return of the Mummers Festival on November 26th, we are rebroadcasting one of our previous podcasts, an interview with Ryan Davis, the mummer-in-charge of the festival!

Ryan Davis has been running the Mummers Festival since 2009. He holds an MA in Folklore and a BA in Communication Studies. It was his interest in festivals, celebrations, and costuming that led him to mummering traditions. The Mummers Festival promotes the continuation and evolution of traditional arts and performance by encouraging active participation in mummering activities. The Mummers Festival helps to keep mummering alive and contemporary and adds to the population’s pride of place.

In this edition of the Living Heritage Podcast, Ryan talks about what mummers are and what they do, the beginnings of the Mummers Festival and how it has grown over seven years, the successes and challenges of running a festival, and what he hopes the festival will offer in the future.

See you at the parade on December 10th!

Listen on the Digital Archive:

http://collections.mun.ca/cdm/singleitem/collection/ich_oral/id/678/rec/1

#Folklorephoto Do you have memories of the Newfoundland Railway?

This weeks Folklore Photo is a still taken from one of the 8mm reels that came to us from the Grand Falls-Windsor Heritage Society. This particular film features an event taking place at the railway station in Grand Falls-Windsor. While the date and particulars of the event are unidentified, it is an example of the goings-on that took place around train stations in our province. The film shows a train pulling up to the Grand Falls station, which is decorated with Union Jacks. Crowds are gathered around the station, waiting to see the visiting dignitary step out of the train car. The visitors arrive, step from the train and are greeted with handshakes and photos before they are whisked away in waiting cars.    

A train pulling up to the Grand Falls Railway Station

Stay tuned for the full reels to be posted soon! If you can identify the visitors or any other individuals in the film, please email me at kelly@heritagefoundation.ca

#CollectiveMemories Booklet Launch - The Story of the Spar: An Oral History of the Hazel Pearl

Left to Right: Roy Hiscock, Ben Hiscock, Minnie Hiscock, Albert Hiscock, and Sarah Hiscock. 

On Tuesday afternoon the Heritage Foundation and the Champney’s West Heritage Group Inc. launched the booklet The Story of the Spar: An Oral History of the Hazel Pearl. The booklet launch took place in the Ella Freeman Heritage House in Champney’s West, Bonavista Peninsula. There were twenty community members who came out for the launch including four of the people who were interviewed about the wreck of the Hazel Pearl. The Heritage House provided tea, coffee, and some treats for everyone to enjoy.

The Story of the Spar: An Oral History of the Hazel Pearl is the second booklet in the Collective Memories Series produced by the Heritage Foundation. This booklet focuses on the Hazel Pearl shipwreck and includes archival research, field recording measurements of the spar, and oral history interview transcripts. The interviews were completed by Terra Barrett and Dale Jarvis, the measurements and drawing of the spar by Michael Philpott and Li Xingpei, background research by Sarah Hannon, and the booklet was edited by Heather Elliott.

As stated in The Sailor’s Word-Book:

Li Xingpei measuring the spar in July 2016.

The spar which sits outside the Heritage House was once a part of the Hazel Pearl. This spar was part what sparked the interest in the story of the Hazel Pearl and was accidentally brought ashore by fisherman Wayne Freeman when it became tangled in his capelin seine several summers back. 

If you want to learn more about the spar or the Hazel Pearl you can head to collections.mun.ca to hear the full interviews or you can check out PDF version of the booklet here!

The Hazel Pearl booklet is part of the foundation’s Collective Memories Project. This project is an initiative of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Office of the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador, with funding provided by the Department of Children, Seniors, and Social Development. The Collective Memories Project invites seniors to record their stories and memories for sharing.

~Terra Barrett

Reviewing old photographs in the Heritage House.

Living Heritage Podcast Ep061 Forgotten Songs of the Newfoundland Outports

Anna Kearney Guigné is an independent folklorist and adjunct professor affiliated with Memorial University of Newfoundland’s ethnomusicology program. An historian at heart, Kearney Guigné has extensively written about twentieth-century folksong collectors and collecting practices. Kearney Guigné also explores the wide range of influences that continue to shape our rich musical tradition including such popular media as newspapers, broadsides, songsters, and radio programs, vinyl recordings.

This November, Anna will release her fourth major publication The Forgotten Songs of the Newfoundland Outports: As Taken from Kenneth Peacock’s Field Collection, 1951-1961. We talk about the life, fieldwork, and legacy of Kenneth Peacock, and the work of selecting songs for publication in this new book.

Listen on the Digital Archive:
http://collections.mun.ca/cdm/singleitem/collection/ich_oral/id/692/rec/1

Take note! 

The University of Ottawa Press and the Canadian Museum of History official book launch of

The Forgotten Songs of the Newfoundland Outports

As taken From Kenneth Peacock’s Field Collection, 1951-1961

By Anna Kearney Guigné

Wednesday November 30th from 7:30 to 9:00 pm

MMaP Gallery

Research Centre for Music, Media and Place

Second floor, Arts & Culture Centre, St. John’s, NL

#Folklorephoto The cross in St. Cecilia Roman Catholic Cemetery, St. Lawrence

When driving through St. Lawrence a large concrete crucifix can be seen from the road, standing tall among the headstones in St. Cecilia Roman Catholic Cemetery. While we were in St. Lawrence Dale interviewed Thérèse Slaney about her life, and she talked proudly about her husband Herb, an engineer who designed the cross.

The cross in St. Cecilia Roman Catholic Cemetery

After the interview, Thérèse showed us some of Herbs beautiful technical drawings, some of the cross and others of the St. Lawrence Grotto which he also designed.

Herb Slaney's technical drawing of the cross

In the following clip you can listen to Thérèse Slaney talk about the work Herb did on the cross.

#CollectiveMemories Roadtrip to St. Lawrence

Terra Barrett and Kelly Drover with the material to be digitized!

Last Thursday Dale, Kelly and I took a drive down the Burin Peninsula to meet with the St. Lawrence Historical Advisory Committee. When we arrived on Thursday afternoon we stopped in to their office in the town hall where we sorted through the material they needed digitized. We ended up taking 20 VHS, 21 CDs and DVDs, 4 cassettes, 4 Kodak slide carousels filled with slides and a small box of assorted slides. This material will be digitized over the next little while and will certainly keep Kelly busy. After this successful visit we drove to Burin in order to take a couple of photos of the designated buildings in the community. We also stopped in to the Heritage Café for a delicious supper.

Public meeting on oral history projects.

In the evening we met with community members in the St. Lawrence Public Library in order to discuss how to do an oral history project. Dale gave an introduction to oral history interviewing including how to focus the interview, reasons to conduct an informal “pre-interview” and the sort of questions to ask. We also ran through the basics of consent forms and how to process the material once you collect it. This included an explanation of tape logs and suggestions of ways to use the material such as booklets, audio clips, etc.

ThérèseSlaney and Dale Jarvis.

Reviewing Herb Slaney's plans.

The following morning we had an interview with Thérèse Slaney about growing up in St. Pierre, her move to St. Lawrence and marriage to Herb Slaney, a description of the first autopsy performed in the community and its importance to miners, an explanation of how the tradition of Mardi Gras started in St. Lawrence, and her husband Herb’s work engineering the cross and grotto in the community. Thérèse was a wonderful woman to chat with and described delicious French foods over a cup a tea in her kitchen.

St. Lawrence's grotto.

The cross in St. Cecilia Roman Catholic Cemetery.

After our interview with Therese we had a look at the community’s grotto and cross engineered by Herb Slaney and visited a couple of graveyards. Our last stop on the drive back to St. John’s was to the community of Petite Forte to photograph another designated building and take a look at the beautiful harbour. All in all a very successful trip to the Burin Peninsula!

Petite Forte

~Terra Barrett

Digitizing the Mount Pearl Oral History Project. #collectivememories #oralhistory

Gaze in wonder at our high-tech digitization suite, converting micro-cassette tapes to WAV format recordings!

Our Collective Memories project is embarking on a new partnership with the Admiralty House Communications Museum to digitize its oral history collection, largely collected in the early 2000s. Here, we are digitizing an interview conducted January 16, 2001 with Steve Best, conducted by Lisa Abbott. The interview focuses on Steve's childhood memories of growing up in Gambo and later working for the Newfoundland Railway as a telegrapher. There is some focus as well on his memories of Mount Pearl in the 1970s.

We will be working with the fabulous Carla Watson at the Museum to place the collection online as part of Memorial University's Digital Archives Initiative. Stay tuned!

- Dale

Living Heritage Podcast Ep060 Cousin Silas and The Moose Woman

Elinor has been telling stories for over 25 years . She was inspired by many, including Newfoundland fiddler and storyteller, Emile Benoit, Rita Cox, Bob Barton and Laura Simms. After 22 years as an administrator with the Newfoundland Public Libraries, she left to devote more time to storytelling, working with the “Learning Through the Arts” programme in schools in Western Newfoundland, before moving to Nova Scotia in 2011. Lifetime member, former Administrator, retired Webmaster of Storytellers of Canada/Conteurs du Canada, she received the Storytellers of Canada/Conteurs du Canada “Storykeeper Award” in 2015.

In this podcast, we discuss how Elinor started in storytelling, her new project “Cousin Silas and the Moose Woman”, and the work of Silas Tertius Rand who was a Baptist Missionary and Mi’kmaq story collector. We also discuss several stories Silas collected and published and what the future holds for Elinor’s storytelling projects.

Listen on the Digital Archive:
http://collections.mun.ca/cdm/ref/collection/ich_oral/id/696

Photo: 1880-1887 ca. The Reverend Silas Tertius Rand and two Mi'kmaq boys Amherst, N.S. Photograph: R. S. Pridham

Booklet Launch - The Story of the Spar: An Oral History of the Hazel Pearl

The Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Champney's West Heritage Group Inc. invite you to the official public launch of our new booklet:
The Story of the Spar: An Oral History of the Hazel Pearl

Tuesday, November 15th, 2016
3:00 pm
Free Admission
Ella Freeman Heritage House, Champney's West, Bonavista Peninsula

“The Story of the Spar: An Oral History of the Hazel Pearl” is the second booklet in the Collective Memories Series produced by the Heritage Foundation. This booklet focuses on the history of the Hazel Pearl and the memories of several community members about the wreck of the boat and the rescue of the spar.

“We saw the Hazel Pearl coming in around, coming in here on their full sail, fully rigged,” recalls Ben Hiscock. “She come on in and she hit the hard ice and and he holed her up, holed her upward and the water started pouring in.”

Hiscock was one of several residents of Champney’s West who was interviewed as part of the oral history project completed by the Foundation. The booklet which developed out of the interviews was edited by Heather Elliott with research conducted by Terra Barrett and Sarah Hannon.

“The booklet focuses on the story surrounding the shipwreck of the Hazel Pearl and the spar (a mast off the boat) which was retrieved by local fisherman Wayne Freeman and is displayed outside the Heritage House,” says Barrett, a researcher with the Intangible Cultural Heritage office of the Heritage Foundation of NL. “The booklet contains transcribed excerpts and portraits of community members, background research, memories of the wreck as well as a detailed drawing of the spar.”

The Hazel Pearl booklet is part of the foundation’s Collective Memories Project. This project is an initiative of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Office of the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador, with funding provided by the Department of Children, Seniors, and Social Development. The Collective Memories Project invites seniors to record their stories and memories for sharing.

The booklet launch is open to the public and will include tea and light refreshments. There will be printed copies of the booklet available at the launch and a PDF version will be placed online.

For more information please go to www.collectivememories.ca, call Terra Barrett at 1-888-739-1892 ext. 5 or email terra@heritagefoundation.ca

Li Xingpei measuring the spar outside the Ella Freeman Heritage House in Champney's West.